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June 30, 2006

Canadian Politics: Military Spending

People are nearly always surprised by what I have to say about the military. They take one look at me, or read some of the things I've written, and conclude that I'm one of those folks who don't give a damn about the armed forces of my country. My opinion is that if you are going to have a military you can't be half assed about it and not properly fund it. That's unfair to the men and women who we send out into an ever increasingly dangerous world.

Canada has a military that has stood them well over the years, and measured up favourably to many a larger force when called upon. Until the end of World War One Canada's foreign policy was still being set by Great Britain, which meant that when they went to war so did we. Which explains how Canadian troops ending up in South Africa fighting in the Boer Rebellions.

It also meant that Canadian troops were placed under the ultimate command of the British, which may go a long way to explaining the reputation they earned as shock troops in World War One. Whole towns lost a generation of men at Ypres probably because some British general decided to soften up the Germans by sending waves of Canadians at them. It may have cemented Canada's reputation as a military force in the early twentieth century, but it was at a horrible price.

World War two was the first war that Canada actually entered on it's own via a vote in parliament. That it came one day after the British declared war on the Germans, and there was only one vote against (J. S. Woodsworth, a devout Christian and conscientious objector, was the only voice of dissent) probably said more about our strong ties to England than our burning desire to go to war.

Whatever the reason for entering the war, Canadian troops went into battle for the first time led by their own generals. Unfortunately they still ended up being placed under the command of the British armies, which led to the unholy disaster of Dieppe in 1942. Planned by the British, it involved attempting to land a force of troops in occupied Germany, primarily Canadian for reasons that are still unclear to this day.

Perhaps it was to appease the Russians who were clamouring for a second front in Europe to relieve some of the pressure they were feeling being the only the forces actively engaging the Germans in Europe. Or maybe it was to gauge the feasibility of invasion at that time. What ever the reasoning was it ended up being a slaughter and less than half those involved were able to get out again leaving the rest behind either dead or captured.

When the actual invasion took place in 1944 Canada played a key role in the liberation of the Netherlands. To this day the people of Holland remember their liberators and honour them annually. Ottawa, the capital of Canada, has received so many gifts of tulip bulbs for its flowerbeds, that every year they hold an annual tulip festival. These are partially in recognition of the fact that the city sheltered the Dutch royal family during the war, but also due to our troops role in the liberation of their country.

In the 1950's Canadian troops started to wear the blue helmet of the United Nations for the first time. In the early part of the decade it was the civil war in Korea, but it was in 1957 during the Suez Canal Crisis that the role of the Canadian armed forces was to be defined for the next twenty odd years. In order to separate the combatants; Israel, France, and Great Britain, against Egypt and prevent the intervention of the Soviet Union; Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister, Lester Pearson, proposed a buffer zone of neutral troops overseen by the United Nations. Thus was born the concept of peacekeeping forces.

Until the first Gulf War and Prime Minister Brian Mulroney changed the direction of our military, Canada's armed forces became synonymous with peacekeeping. In all the hotspots around the world; Cyprus, the Golan Heights, Viet Nam and any other place the blue helmets were called upon you could usually find Canadian troops. They were respected by people on both sides of disputes as being fair and impartial and served with such distinction that when the Nobel peace prize was awarded to Peace Keeping forces, Canada was called upon to act as one of the recipients.

Unfortunately a succession of governments over the years has constantly under funded the forces. It hasn't mattered which political party has been in power, they've talked a good game and not done what's been necessary to keep Canada's military up to date and adequately funded. A major part of the problem has been an inability to define a clear-cut role for our troops.

Each new political master has a slightly different vision of what duties and actions are forces are to be capable of carrying out. Over the past couple of decades there has been flirtation with changing them from a buffer zone to a direct participant, but no real commitment has been made to match the needs to the desire.

You can't send troops into a combat situation with troop carriers whose armour can't stop the lightest rounds of fire or rifles that date back to the seventies. They need to have more than just one set of uniforms so they don't show up in a desert environment wearing olive green fatigues as has happened in the past. But most importantly they need an annual budget that allows the troops and their families to live without financial worries.

This week's announcement of nearly $15 billion in spending on military equipment to replace the aged fleets of helicopters, supply planes, and merchant ships maybe necessary, but it hardly comes close to addressing the real problems facing individual soldiers. It allows the Conservative Party to say they are correcting Liberal negligence (The Liberals had included $12.6 billion in their last budget for capital expenditures on the military) and stage photo opportunities around the country and look like they are doing something, but the actuality is far less impressive then the perception.

There has been no real increase in the annual military budget for the last decade. Each year they have less money to spend on the troops, but the demands on their resources has increased. What must the morale of the troops be like if they are living close to or below the poverty line?

Kingston Ontario where I live is home to a Canadian Forces Base. During the sixteen years that I've lived in Kingston the local papers have run at regular intervals stories of enlisted personnel having to utilize the local food banks to make it through to the end of the month. Is this a way to run an army where we don't even pay the soldiers sufficient money to properly clothe and feed their families?

Our government seems to want to turn Canada's military into a more a more aggressive force than previously. Instead of just serving as peacekeepers as we have in the past, our troops are seeing front line duty as active participants in a war zone. It's all very well and good to invest in equipment, but shouldn't a commitment in terms of financial support to the people who make up the front line troops be as important if not more so?

Our government just claimed they found $5 billion dollars more surplus than they had counted on, so it's obvious we have the money to increase the military's annual budget without taking money from other programs. In fact if this government wasn't so obsessed with giving it's buddies in the business community tax breaks to lay off workers, close factories and sell out to foreign investment, they could probably afford across the board increases to the military and social programming.

If they can quietly pass a bill raising Members of Parliament expense accounts how can they say there is no money for annual increases to soldiers risking their lives at their government's request? This government had to be shamed into honouring the soldiers who have fallen in Afghanistan, has banned the press from filming caskets of dead soldiers being returned to Canada, and claims that the Canadian public doesn't understand the need for our soldiers being in Afghanistan.

Perhaps what the Canadian public doesn't understand is how, in spite of all the flowery rhetoric wafting out of Ottawa, the government seems to be all talk and no action when it comes to supporting the troops. It's all very well and good to buy expensive new equipment for the armed forces, but without people you don't have much of an army. Maybe the government should try to remember that in the future.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:41 AM |

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June 29, 2006

Canadian Politics: Harper's Ravens Come Home To Roost

If you happen to live in the Sussex Drive area of Ottawa Ontario Canada and hear the sound of Ravens cackling during the day as they come home to roost, don't be alarmed. They're not coming for you, but rather settling in at 24 Sussex Drive, official residence of Canadian Prime Ministers.

Some nasty stuff is beginning to swirl around the Conservative Party of Canada just now, and you can bet that the Liberal party is going to be there, attempting to inflict as much damage as possible. The cracks in the veneer have been starting to show for a while, and now the breath of scandal is in the air. There's nothing that a party who's as corrupt and venal as the Liberals like more than being able to assume the air of violated virgins.

The Conservative Party should have known better and not even offered the Liberals the teeniest straw to start building bricks from to toss at them. Having spent the last three or so years on the defensive because of the Sponsorship scandal, the Liberals are desperate to go on the offensive. Nothing makes a political party feel better than to be able to scrape off some of the excrement smeared on their faces and throw it right back at their former accusers.

The Conservative Party of Canada eked out a minority government in the past election by promising a change from the corruption and ineptitude of the previous administration. Good, clean, open, and accountable government was what they promised Canadians. The Liberals had become arrogant and out of touch with the needs of real Canadians was their claim and the Conservatives would be different.

They just never said in which direction the differences would lie; every one just assumed they meant they'd be less arrogant, more open, and less devious. But the Steven Harper led Conservatives have proven that you don't have to have been in power for any length of time, or even have a majority government, to scale the heights of arrogant disregard for public opinion.

Garnering less than 40% of the popular vote in an election and less than half the seats in parliament, in most people's minds, mean there is some hesitations about your policies. You would think that a government in that situation might temper its approach and seek out conciliatory means of implementing policies. Perhaps even listening to what the people of Canada want instead of simply imposing policy might be an idea.

While the majority of Canadians support same sex marriage, softening of marijuana laws, agreed with the former Liberal government's day care proposal, and the Kelowna accord signed with all the provinces and the Assembly of First Nations last November, the Conservatives decided they knew better.

First off they decided their day care plan was superior to the one the Liberals had worked out with the provinces. Even though it would do nothing to create more desperately needed spaces, or help those who needed it most, single parents, they made the unilateral decision that it would be better. No need to consult with the provinces at all, just because they happen to have jurisdiction over day care, doesn't mean they should have any input on policy?

Simply because the majority of Canadians think that there are far too many people in jail because they've smoked marijuana, the Conservatives know better. They know that we must continue with the war on drugs and keep increasing the strain on our overburdened prisons and the taxpayers to keep our streets safe from such ner' – do- wells.

Ever since the Supreme Court of Canada said that it violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to deny same sex couples the right to marriage, provinces across Canada have been quietly passing resolutions allowing gay marriages. There's nothing been said mandating religious organizations to perform same sex unions if it goes against their belief, all that's been guaranteed is the right to a civil union.

Due to the fact that same sex marriage is now protected by the Charter of Rights it is impossible for any government to prevent them from taking place without invoking the Not Withstanding Clause that allows them to override civil liberties decisions made by the court. In spite of that fact Steven Harper has been promising an open vote on the issue by this fall.

He's not answered whether he'd be willing to invoke the Not Withstanding Clause; he just keeps nattering on about protecting the sanctity of marriage. In other words he's playing to his constituents and making it seem like he can do something, which is not within his power to accomplish, and that he has no intention of doing either.

Maybe he figures he can define himself as both defender of "family" to the social conservatives, while not alienating the social liberal vote he needs to win another election. Perhaps he thinks they don't read or listen to the news so they won't notice he's talking out of both sides of his mouth, or maybe he thinks people are just too stupid to know what he's doing. It's a good thing this isn't an arrogant government.

Mr. Harper promised what he called accountable government, one that would be open and transparent with all its dealings with the Canadian people. To that end he has forbidden all Cabinet Ministers and back benchers to talk with the press, he has abolished post caucus press conferences, and has almost completely refused to have anything to do with the media at all.

Whenever a politician doesn't want his policies analysed, is worried about being caught out in "miscommunications", or having the fallacies of his programming dissected by the media he or she will immediately announce they "will only speak directly to the public". In other words they will never be publicly questioned by the media about decisions, or have their own words thrown in their face in public. They will pop out in front of the cameras, read a carefully constructed speech praising themselves and vanish again.

You see nothing is their fault; the public would love their ideas if only the press wasn't so hard on them, or on a continuous witch-hunt because of their political bias. Isn't it weird how every government no matter what their political leanings are the victims of anti-them bias in the media? When a party is in opposition they love to talk to the media about how important they, the press, are when it comes to ferreting out the true story.

As soon as they become the government and the true story happens to be about them, while that's a whole other matter. Everything is all of a sudden slanted to make them look bad, the press are out to get them and the public isn't getting the true picture of how great they are doing. They are getting exactly the same treatment that every other ruling party has received, but somehow or other it all of a sudden has become media bias.

So much for Mr. Harper's open government. It didn't last until his swearing in as Prime Minister. Before the caucus was even in their seats in the House backbenchers were under orders that they were not to speak to any member of the press without permission from the Prime Minister's office first. Shortly after that was extended to ministers of the Cabinet as well so that all members of the Conservative Party caucus could now speak with their master's voice.

These are the things that get the Ravens starting to take an interest, looks like there could be some carrion coming, but for them to start roosting takes something a little more then just run of the mill average political misdeeds. The Liberal party thinks they might have found something based on the new legislation dealing with campaign contributions.

The law now states that no individual may donate more then $1000.00 to any political party and corporations are not allowed to make contributions to a party, only to the riding association that their business is in. According to the Liberals the Conservative party of Canada, unlike all the other parties, did not issue receipts for any amount of the fee charged to delegates for attending their last convention. As each individual paid $600.00 and corporations $750.00 this could have easily put many individuals over the top of their limit, and could be seen as corporations donating directly to the national party which is forbidden.

The Conservatives are claiming since no tax receipts were issued that these amounts can't be considered donations, but in the past all of the parties have issued receipts for these types of fees. A sizable percentage of the fee is used for what could be deemed charitable purposes under the Charities act. It is accepted practice to allow charities to issue tax receipts for admission charges over and above what is considered paying for services. It's the same principle in effect if a theatre company has a special fundraising performance where the money paid for the admittance above and beyond the ticket price is considered a donation.

In case you think that the Liberals are just making trouble, the thing is if it is found that by not declaring these amounts as donations the Conservatives are in breach of the law, they themselves will be in a real quandary. The Liberal's upcoming convention requires a fee of $995.00 for admission, and if all of that is considered a donation it means that only people who have donated less then five dollars since January 1st/06 can attend.

So their motivation is two fold, one is try and nail the Conservative's hides to wall for talking out two sides of their mouth about integrity and financial reform, and two to see if the Conservatives have changed the laws without telling anybody. No matter how you slice it the Conservative won't come out looking good from this one without returning a lot of money.

They either been caught exceeding the amounts allowed for contributions from individuals and accepting contributions from corporations in a manner not allowed, or they have technically done nothing illegal but have been morally and ethically slippery by redefining unilaterally what are considered donations.

Under the Income Tax Act, according to the way the Liberal's lawyers are interpreting it, any amount a taxpayer gives to a political party is a monetary contribution under the Elections Act. What that means in English is that, no matter how you slice it, you give a party money, it counts towards your total. Which means of the 2,900 people who attended that little get together last spring, the Conservatives had better hope none of them had donated more then $400.00 over the rest of 2005.

How they are going to explain away the corporate donations is another story, as that's been completely illegal since 2004. If the Liberal interpretation turns out to be correct the Conservatives are going to find themselves with quite a mess on their hands.

After an opening six months of proving they can be just as arrogant as any other party, and have no conception of what the word accountable means, a nice little scandal involving illegal campaign contributions is just what's needed to get the Ravens landing outside the windows on 24 Sussex muttering under their breath words that sound suspiciously like "never more".


Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:46 AM |

June 28, 2006

Nature And Humans: We're Not That Important

It strikes me as odd to hear people talk about how the increase of hurricanes or other natural disasters are Mother Nature's means of getting back at us for our evil ways. Sure we have screwed around with the natural order of things and turned swampland into deserts, deserts into swamp lands by not thinking of the long-term consequences of our actions.

Certainly this is representative of our careless attitude towards the natural world and reflects badly on how we view our relationship with the planet on which we live, but the sentimentalizing of nature into an entity that cares one whit about us either way is just as wrongheaded. It's not the facts that I have a problem with, I have no trouble believing that climate change caused by pollution increases the number and the potency of hurricanes in a season.

But the concept of nature making a conscious decision to create more natural disasters as a result is as equally inane an argument as those who said the devastation of New Orleans was God's punishment for their wicked ways. Both ways of thinking reflect a hubris that is the root of our misguided relationship with the natural world; that we are more important than anything else on the planet.

The Catholic Church used to burn people at the stake as heretics if they claimed that the earth was not the centre of the universe with the other planets and the Sun revolving around us. How could it be otherwise since we were the ultimate creation and everything was built for us? It was only when scientific proof grew too irrefutable did it become accepted wisdom that we, like all the other planets revolved around the Sun.

But even though we reluctantly gave up on the idea that we were the centre of the Universe, we were going to be the raison d'etre for the existence of this planet no matter what anybody else believed or said. What's funny is how many "primitive" and "uncivilized" people in the world at that time believed differently. They had the crazy idea that humans were not more important than anything else in the world.

Let us step even further back in time for a moment to when the majority of human life was taken up with survival. Whether in the agrarian societies of Europe and elsewhere or the hunter-gatherer societies of the woods of North and South America and the deserts of Africa and beyond everything from what we did during the day, to what we worshiped, was wrapped up in insuring survival. More specifically the collection of food that would see a village through times when hunting or growing wasn't possible.

Living on such intimate terms with nature makes you aware of how insignificant you and your concerns are in the natural course of events. Why else would agrarian societies develop rituals that were designed to attract the attention of whoever to ensure rain and sunlight in equal measure and give thanks at the end of the harvest season. If your source of food is wild game it only makes sense that you develop rituals that will ensure plentiful supplies of game. You probably will be careful not to over hunt, or do anything that could screw up your food supply.

We don't have a natural place in the food chain save for the top. There're not many species that make us a regular part of their diet, so anything we do makes an imbalance in the natural order of things by adding in a link that doesn't reciprocate in some manner. Unlike other large predators, like the wolf and mountain lion in North America, or the jaguar in South America, and the lions and tigers of Africa and Asia, our numbers have always been such that we can have a nasty effect on prey if we're not careful.

As our species moved away from this pattern of sustainable living that direct relationship with nature was lost. As food became a commodity from which wealth could be accumulated and the trading of goods replaced hunting as a means of obtaining it, the former harmonious relationship fell by the wayside.

Instead of living according to patterns set forth by the natural world, we looked for ways to dominate nature and make it behave in the way we wanted. The damming of rivers to create lakes, the draining of marshes to build on, and the clearing of forests to make farmer's fields were the earliest and most obvious ways in which we began to tamper.

But it wasn't until the coming of the industrial revolution that not only craved natural resources but generated harmful wastes, did our caviller attitudes start causing real damage and sever any ties that might have been left between the majority of people and the natural world.

The belief that we humans exist in a vacuum separate from the natural world is just as persistent today as it was during the industrial revolution. Each year the amount of habitable land for wild life of all kinds is reduced by larger and larger increments as our insatiable greed for natural resources continues unabated.

Instead of expressing concern over the fact that it's taken us little less than a hundred years of the automobile's existence to deplete a large amount of the world's easily accessible oil supply, we continue to intrude further into what's left of the wilderness in order to buy another generation fuel.

But it's not our exploitation of the environment alone that shows our continued belief that we matter more than other life forms. There's the way in which environmentalists appeal to others with the "aren't those animals too cute to kill" approach. The animal in question usually ends up being relegated to the sidelines and it becomes an opportunity for people to show "how much they care" without actually doing anything constructive.

This almost condescending attitude towards the natural world doesn't do anything to dispel the illusion that we are more important then it is. Like sentimental movies that give animals human characteristics because that way they become "real" to us, hardly anything is done to show the natural world being important on its own without any human involvement.

Some organizations, like the Nature Conservancy of Canada stress purchasing land to buffer habitats. That means that land is being saved from development and biodiversity is encouraged to reform as our interference is removed from the food chain. Programs like that are real attempts to redress the imbalance of years of neglect and recognise we are only a small cog in a very large and diverse wheel.

To say that Mother Earth is fighting back by sending up hurricanes, tidal waves, and volcanic eruptions is to imply that we actually matter. In so many ways we still believe the Universe revolves around us, and that thinking something like that only proves it. All those things were happening on the planet long before we came along, and will continue to happen long after we've died out.

The only thing we are doing with our self-importance is making the earth less and less habitable for us and some other creatures that live here. The Earth is just doing what comes natural to her when she creates huge winds and big waves. Don't take it personally or anything, but we're just not important enough for her to be doing it as revenge for our actions.

As far as the planet can tell we are just another life form. Isn't it about time we remembered that?



Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:01 AM |

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June 27, 2006

Hunting The Muse

The body hanging from the ceiling, with it's feet just brushing the back of the tipped over chair, looked like a pendulum ready to start keeping time. As the two cops gathered it up in their arms, prior to cutting it down to determine cause of death (neck stretched beyond capabilities of bones to withstand maybe?), watching from the doorway I realized that I wasn't even that surprised.

There are some cases you take on that you know will either end in a room like this one; with its chipped paint, iron bed and cheap mattress; sink in the corner that spews out rusty water, and a tipped over chair; or a back alley. They have the stink of futility rising from them in much the same way the beach smells these days at low tide.

There aren't many private dicks that search for missing muses anymore, it was always pretty much a specialty niche anyway, and for someone to show up at my door they're going to have be pretty desperate. The guy dancing the corpse Congo with the cops right now hadn't been any sort of exception. The look in his beady little eyes, as they swivelled behind his glasses checking out the room, spoke of too many hours staring at blank pages.

It had been one of those days in July where the world has stopped breathing, and no matter how high you have the fan going the air remained stagnant. Smoke from cigarettes smoked hours ago gathered at the ceiling and hung over my desk like a storm cloud. Even if I could have opened the window in the office (some bright spark had painted it shut) the smell of exhaust fumes would have just compounded the issue further.

The rap on the door had been as close to inaudible as possible while still staying on this side of existence. In reply to my calling out "Enter" the door was eased open a crack and he slid into the room. From across the office he was an unremarkable looking in the fact that he nothing really distinguished him from the next guy. His clothes were okay, but they had that rumpled look that only sleeping in them for three days and not changing anything could cause.

It wasn't until he had sat down in the chair opposite me that I noticed his eyes. Aside from them being in constant motion as mentioned before, they had the haunted look of someone who had suffered a great loss. I took a cigarette out of my case and began tapping it's end prior to lighting up and increasing the chances of a nicotine shower descending from overhead.

"What can I do for you pal?" Not very original but effective none the less in getting the client to answer – the more hard-boiled they think you are the better. Two years of method acting classes had taught me enough to carry it off. To complete the picture for him I grabbed a wooden match from it's container on the desk and struck it off the sole of the foot that crossed over the left leg.

"Do your really look for lost muses like your add says" He obviously wasn't used to talking to people, as it took him three attempts to force out the words, accompanied by much throat clearing. Taking a second closer look at him I saw that although his face was ashen with worry, it was obvious that it wasn't much paler than normal. This guy didn't see the light of day or consort with his fellow humans all that much.

I uncrossed my legs and turned in my chair so that we were facing each other directly across the desk. The clients always like a little eye contact when they're just starting out with you; it makes them fell that little bit less of a stranger.

"I've been known to track down missing muses on occasion. I take it yours has gone missing?

"Gone missing? Gone missing? More like deserted me at the worst possible time" There was an edge of something akin to hysteria in his voice as he answered. That should have set off alarm bells but I'd seen so many almost identical types come through the door that it wasn't until after the fact that I picked up the clues to his desperation.

He had obviously thought she had been his only companion and with her gone not only was his work down the toilet, but he was alone. I don't know if things would have ended differently if somebody had begun this investigation earlier but without her his life was obviously a living hell.

"Two weeks ago, I sat down to begin a sequel to my first book and I ended up just sitting for three hours. I didn't write down a thing. I sat and sat and nothing, do you understand nothing, came. Not a thought, not an idea, not even a picture of where it was all supposed to be taking place would come to me."

He leaned over the desk, and quickly; making sure that we were really alone he continued. "It's been the same every day since, I don't know how much longer I can keep going. My agent and my publisher are phoning on alternate days and they're really putting the screws to me. I was supposed to have the first three chapters finished today, and I have nothing."

He was trembling so bad I though he was going to cry. If we didn't get down to particulars soon he was going to be useless. "Alright, I know what happens when a muse leaves you dried up and shrivelled like a prune, you're not the only author that's wandered through that door you know. A little piece of free advice though, don't ever think you're agent is on your side cause he ain't. He's out to get whatever he can out of you for himself. When he or she signs you with a publisher, he gets his cut up front off the top of what you're getting but than he has to deliver a book from you that's as good as he said it was going to be."

"What I'm saying here is, don't trust your agent to have your best interest at heart once you've signed up. He's now working for the publisher. You have to learn to tell them it will be ready when it's ready"

"But I don't know if I'll ever finish unless you can help me. Can you help me find her, my muse I mean?"

"That's what I do. Now I'll need to know what the project is that your working on, and of course who your muse is and what she looks like. Or at the very least I need you to think real hard about what she looks like so that I can get a good idea of who or what it is I'm looking for"

He sat opposite the desk from me staring open mouthed for a second. Then very slowly he stood up and began to back away from me. "Why do you want to know what I'm working on – huh tell me that? What's that got to do with anything? What are you going to do with this information?"

"Don't think I don't know who you are just because you hide here in this office pretending to be an investigator when you're really a writer too. I've seen your face on enough dust jackets to remember now. If I told you what my novel is about the next thing I'd know is you'd have published it."

He was almost at the door by the time he finished, and he was reaching out for the door handle when I stopped him with one more question. "Why do you think I opened this detective agency?"

He looked back at me, still angry, and said " So you try and milk people for their ideas and not have to come up with any on your own."

"That's the problem when you make accusations without knowing the facts. The facts are that I lost my muse ten years ago and I opened this place as a means to try and find her. I haven't had any luck yet but I'm still looking. I figured since I was looking for mine, the least I can do is do the same for others and make a little money as well."

He stood staring at me with one hand on the door handle during the time I was speaking. When I finished he just stared at me in horror, mouthed "ten years", then he pulled the door open and was gone.

I sighed as I ground out my cigarette and wondered how long it would be before I got the phone call about this one. So many take it real hard when they find out that what they thought was a muse wasn't and on top of that how long it takes to hunt for a muse. You see they've mistaken a spurt of inspiration that carried them through a book, maybe two, as a muse, stupid fools. That's like mistaking a chippie who rents a room by the hour with a call girl who comes to a permanent arrangement.

Of course you can't secure a muse for any amount of cash, and panicked searching is just going to scare her away. First it's gotta be a long respectful courtship – no wham bam thank you mam for her. Hey she's not gonna' invest a lot of time and money in just any yahoo, yer gonna' have to earn it.

Which means work, sitting behind a typewriter or at a computer terminal and click clicking away at them keys until you're fingers bleed and you get calluses on the blisters; and you've gone through that carpal tunnel and back again so many times your wrists are permanent puff balls. You start showing that kind of dedication to what you do, and she might just decide to cast an eye in your direction. Once you got her attention you're pretty much set as long as you show yourself willing to keep working. Unless of course you happen to piss her off some how, and the less said about that the better. Cause you never know when her eye is going to turn your way and you don't want to be talking about her in a negative light just at the moment she's looking over.

Hunting a muse isn't like hunting anything else, cause you don't go out after her. Running around like a hophead is only going to bore her and keep the eye averted. Your best bet for luring and enticing her is to sit still and focus just on what you're supposed to be doing.

When the phone rang about a half hour after the last fella had left I knew what it was going to be except for the means and the address. After all my years in the business you get a feeling about this. I've ended up standing in this and many other doorways and alley mouths watching the demise of another poor sod who thought there was someone out there just waiting to feed him so he could grow fat off art.

I turned my back as they finished cutting him down, struck a match off the door jam, carefully pocketing the match so I wouldn't pollute the scene of the crime, and after nodding to the sergeant on duty, left. It was time to go sit at my typewriter and see who else might show up today.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 09:43 AM |

June 26, 2006

To Bleed Or Not To Bleed

When I was a kid, and for a few years after that, the food company Del Monte ran adds which featured the tag line "It's not nice to mess with Mother Nature". Needless to say that was meant to assure consumers that the product was as near fresh picked as could be possible for something bought in a can.

It's just a pity that the same catchy slogan can't be stapled to the foreheads of people in the employ of pharmaceutical companies. They seem intent on seeing how far they can push the human body away from the natural order of things. This is especially true in the case of women's menstrual cycles.

The latest attempt comes from the pharmaceutical giant Wyeth and their new birth control pill Anya which would complete eliminate a woman's menstrual cycle. Unlike previous versions of the pill that had a seven-day off period that allowed for a woman's period, Anya would be taken every day for the course of the cycle preventing menstruation.

Instead of releasing the traditional almost 50mg of estragon a pill, Anya would release 25mg, but over a longer time. Thus preventing the menstrual cycle without increasing the amount of estragon being taken by the patient. Currently the only drug on the market that is available for women that will stop their period is Depo Provera a three-month hormone shot.

Initial informal polls done at the Museum of Menstruation in Maryland showed that four out of five women who visited liked the idea of not ever having to have a period again while 50% of the women polled in the medical magazine Contraception also shared that opinion. (The Menstruation Museum closed its doors in 1999 and exists online only and this poll was conducted online as a request for letters in response to the question, "Would you stop Menstruating if you could?" The only references to Contraception Magazine I was able to find online were either offers for magazine subscriptions – over $200.00 per year – and references to articles being published in the magazine.)

Naturally there is some debate among the medical and research profession as to the value and dangers of this product. According to Dr. Robert Reid, a professor of obstetrics and genecology at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario there is no more risk in taking Anya than in taking regular birth control pills; if you're a smoker it will increase your chances of stroke and heart attack for example.

He also sees nothing wrong with a woman stopping having a monthly menstrual flow, and said in Saturday June 24th's Globe and Mail that a woman's period actually might increase her chances of infection each month and that "there's no evidence that you're getting rid of toxins in your body"

Dr. Jerilynn Prior, an endocrinologist and the scientific director of the Centre for Menstrual Cycle and Ovulation Research at the University of British Columbia is highly critical of this pill, and in same article explains that most of her concerns come from the fact that we still don't know the extent of the side effects caused by the original pill. She also brings up the whole "Don't mess with Mother Nature argument."

She points out that menstruation is an "intricate cycle… and a vital sign of our health." Messing with it at this level, she believes is a horrible thought. She thinks that the continuous use pill is just a way for the pharmaceutical companies to jazz up an old product.

What it sounds like is that Health Canada will approve this drug with certain provisos. The basic one being that all women who take the drug will have to enrol in a program where they have to have medical follow-ups every six months. There is no mention about how long that program will in place for, or what Health Canada deems to be long enough to gauge whether or not their will be any ill effects felt by women.

Not being a woman it may not seem appropriate for me to comment on this product, but being appropriate has never been a problem for me before so it's not going to stop me now. I'm sure the appeal for most women will be the convenience; no more having to worry about what you can and can not wear for one week out of every month, no more horrible cramps, no more having to strap on or insert something inside of you every month to mop up blood.

Put like that it sounds just great doesn't it? Free of the curse, as it has been so nicely called by some segments of society. No more thinking of yourself as unclean once a month as so many societies call it. The stigma that's been attached to a woman's cycle for so many years has reduced one of the major distinguishing characteristics of being a mammal to being something dirty that's not talked about in proper society.

There have been many societies where this has not been the case, where a woman's cycle has been taken as a sign of her power of creation, not as a curse. In some Native American nations the women were released from all responsibilities during their cycle. They would gather in a special lodge set aside for them so they could spend the time away from the cares of their day-to-day existence and do whatever they wanted.

If that meant sleeping, sitting up and talking, or praying, it didn't matter, and was left up to the individual person to decide. Instead of trying to hide the fact that women bleed it was recognized as being part of life and accommodated. It was understood that they might need to rest, that their hormones would be out of balance, but most of all they weren't made to feel dirty or unclean.

But a whole industry has been built around convincing women that one week out of the month they are less than perfect, there is something wrong with them, and they have to take steps to ensure that no one knows. Imagine growing up having that being driven into your head all the time?

Think about it guys, how would you feel if something you had no control over made you, at best, an object of derision every month, down on through being told that you have to hide away a part of what defines your gender. What is it about that one bodily function that makes people so uptight and afraid? Everybody always talks about the miracle of birth, but nobody seems to want to admit that it might be because of a woman's bleeding every month that it happens.

Well you know what, I'll let you in on a secret; you can't have one without the other. Shocking news isn't it. If a woman doesn't menstruate she won't have babies. Okay so that's a little sarcastic, but sometimes you have to wonder if the sellers of all this stuff covering up or preventing menses don't want you making the connection between the two.

Why else would they make it something you want to hide, or get rid of, like it serves no purpose? Perhaps because if we admitted how important menstruation was in the grand scheme of things we might end up not treating it with such disdain and actually according the cycle of life some sort of respect.

So that brings us back to the whole issue of stopping a woman's menstrual cycle through the use of drugs. These drugs somehow prevent the woman's uterus from producing eggs and negating the need for the sloughing off of the extra tissue that's produced each month because of it.

If there is no need for the cycle why is it that women who are on estragon therapy have to go in for routine D and C's to clean out the build up in the uterus? I've known women who have had to take Depo Provera for medical reasons and they swell up like balloons because of water retention and some have had their blood pressure go through the roof as a result.

How can stopping a body's normal process from occurring before it is time to stop be said to be without risk if we've never done it before? Nobody has been on it for long enough to know yet what's going to happen to them if they ever want to have a baby afterwards. What effect will it have on a woman's cycle when she wants to start it up again?

When my wife and I got together we knew we weren't going to have children, so I went out and had a vasectomy so she didn't have to take the pill. It took close to six months for her cycle to start to return to normal, and ever since it has been heavier and more debilitating then it was before she went on the pill.

I know that's only one person, and strictly anecdotal evidence, but than how much more proof do any of the companies offer that there will be no problems down the road with something like Anya. Or how about Yasmine, which went on the market in the States in 2002 amid promises that it would reduce a woman's weight. Despite evidence that proofs it has no real effect, women continue to buy it without even considering what about it could cause the weight loss.

The human race doesn't have exactly an exemplary record when it comes to our attempts to mess around with the natural order of things. What evidence is there to support anyone's claims that anything we do makes things better instead of worse? There was probably a good reason for our bodies being designed to function the way they do. There's a lot to be said for the old adage "If it ain't broke don't fix it"

Perhaps that's the other saying the pharmaceutical companies need stapling to their foreheads.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:15 AM |

June 25, 2006

You Know You May Be An Artist

Throughout my career working in the arts, whether in the theatre or now learning my way as a writer, I've been fortunate enough to come into contact with people who have not only shared their experience but also set an example. Some of them have been teachers over the course of years who I've apprenticed with, and others I've only had a few precious hours with, but all of them have contributed something to my development and growth as an artist.

"My development and growth as an artist" implies that I consider myself an artist doesn't it. Sort of presumptuous on my part you might be thinking. Here's this guy who's never even published anything, except online, and he's calling himself an artist. Boy, talk about nerve. Hey, I didn't say I was a writer, only learning my way as a writer, I said I was an artist. Big difference.

Obviously I'm not talking about being a painter either, so what the hell am I talking about, and what is it these people have taught or shown me that so damned important. First off I guess we need to define the "a" word: artist. You hear it being used now –a-days in the same way they used to describe performers as "the talent" in order to differentiate between them and the crew on a movie set or in the studio.

Maybe the union got it put in their contract that talent was demeaning or something, so they get to be called artists instead, I don't know. But hearing someone refer to Julia Roberts or Brittany Spears as an artist makes my head spin and want to go into a full scale Linda Blair act a la The Exorcist. Technically speaking they work in the arts, in the same fields as Judi Dench and Billie Holliday respectively, but there's a world of difference between the latter pair and the former.

Being an artist is not about talent, career choices, how much money you make, or whether or not you lead a tortured life. There have been plenty of people I would consider artists who have made lots of money and seem to have reasonably stable lives. The stereotype of the poor struggling artist suffering for his or her art is usually perpetuated by people who like to assume the role without having done anything to justify the pretence.

The comic Jeff Foxworthy used to do this routine that started off with the line "You know you might be a Redneck when…" and list a variety of characteristics that combined in one person would seal their fate. If you can do that for Rednecks, why can't you do the same sort of thing with artists and their characteristics?

You Know You May Be An Artist If…
you find yourself waking up in the middle of the night just having to write out that poem, record that song, or start that painting.
you have no choice in the matter about whether you're going to do what it is you do, be it acting, singing, painting, or writing. It's a compulsion that left unfulfilled leaves your life empty and meaningless.
you do it regardless of pay, fame, attention, rewards, or other considerations beyond the simple doing.
you are never content with what you have accomplished and always believe you can do better.
nothing, not sex, booze, or drugs gives you the same feeling of fulfillment as your work.
you find yourself thinking of everything in terms of your art. That would make a great scene, that's a great painting, there's a song in that, what a neat character, etc.
you think nothing of sitting up the whole night making sure something is just the way you want it and then tear it up the next day when you think of something better.

Of course there's always the question of how did I come up with that list, isn't there? Why should we believe you and your silly definitions with no proof that it's accurate? The only answer I can give to allay anyone's doubts about the veracity of that list, is that I assembled it based on personal experience, observation of other people at work, conversations with artists who have more experience than me, and reading what other people have had to say about the idea.

If poetry is you goal, you've got to forget all about punishments and all about rewards and all about self-styled obligations and duties and responsibilities etcetera ad infinitum and remember one thing only: that it's you – nobody else – who determine your destiny and decide your fate. (e.e. cummings)

That quote from a series of six non-lectures that e.e. cummings gave at Harvard University back in the 1950's, along with some words from T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, and theatre director Erwin Piscator, have played an important part in my intellectual understanding of what is meant by the term artist. But it was those teachers and others who I talked about back at the beginning who have been the ones that have not only shown me what it takes to be an artist, but what it is to be one as well.

It wasn't through them saying anything in particular, or sitting my down and saying, "So you want to be an artist…" It was and is a matter of observation of who they are and of how they are in the world. Just being and talking with people who are dedicated to creating something beyond themselves for no other reason than the sense of fulfillment it brings them was more informative than any text book or course ever could have been.

Musicians, painters, writers, actors, and designers; it's made no difference what their medium was because they were all driven by the same desire to create. My work in theatre brought me into contact with people working in all disciplines and involved every aspect of artistic creation from conception to reality.

An actor building a character goes through the same process that a designer does in creating the set the actor will perform on. They both start with a concept or idea of what they see the final result being, and than utilize the skills and talent at their disposal to enable them to ensure its realization.

It's been many years since I've worked in theatre, but in the interim, and especially in the last year, I've had the opportunity to talk to authors and musicians about what motivates them to do what they do. The answer has almost invariably been a variation on I need to, I'm driven, or it's what keeps me sane.

When I used the word teacher that might have been misleading, it implies that these people taught me how to do something. But the desire to create is an intangible that can't be learnt like an accountant would learn math to assist him in achieving her goal of becoming a professional. What they and others since have done is show me what is entailed in being an artist.

Everyday I wake up with the compulsion to write. I feel like I'm at my most complete and most alive when doing that. Whether it's writing for my blog, working on my novel, or even writing a letter to somebody about a topic that interests me, it's all part of being who I've become.

Since my illness I've gained a greater appreciation for any time that I'm able to spend at my keyboard writing and putting one word after the other to form a thought, describe a scene, or create a new person. Having periods when I'm not able to write because my body won't let me has taught me not to take anything for granted. Perhaps that's why I'm so defensive about the word artist, the realization that it's a gift that can be taken away at any time.

You know I may or may not be an artist, but the people I've known, met and talked to that I would consider artists never take their gifts of talent for granted. For all of them creating isn't a choice, it's their life…"every artists strictly illimitable country is himself, and the artist who has played that country false has committed suicide" e.e. cummings.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 07:42 AM |

June 24, 2006

CD Review: Crow Jane Alley Willy DeVille

About a month ago I had the opportunity to interview Willy DeVille. I had asked him at the time if it was okay for me to record our conversation, and he had asked that I not for fear of it taking away from the moment. He used the comparison of colour photography versus black and white, saying he preferred the latter because of the simplicity in the moment.

It was more than just a concern about losing spontaneity because of the awareness of being recorded; it was an expression of a desire to keep things as simple and uncomplicated as possible to preserve the integrity of a moment in time at it's most basic. Colour photography leaves nothing to the imagination, eliminates ambiguities. Black and white, on the other hand, suggests some things, while leaving others in shadow and open to interpretation in much the same manner as real human interaction.

That's Willy DeVilles's music in a nutshell, all shadows and suggestions, full of the ambiguities of human nature and gritty reality. He reduces, or distils, life down to its essential elements through his ability to depict moments in time and place lyrically in the same manner as a black and white still photographer.

His most recent studio album, already two years old, Crow Jane Alley provides plenty of opportunity to witness his approach to song writing and performing. Of the ten songs, eight are originals and two are covers that ideally suit both his temperament and musical goals. "Slave For Love" by Bryan Ferry sounds far better with Willy singing it than any other version I've heard as he is able to make the song into a simple statement of intent, rather than a mawkish sentimental ballad.

Then there's his take on that old favourite "Come A Little Bit Closer" by Jay and the Americans. It's a riot; with Willy laying it on so thick that you can hear the leer on his face and see the suggestive twinkle in his eye through your speakers. It's almost as if he's making fun of the old machismo Latin image that he used to have in the days of "Cadillac Walk"

But it's his own material where Willy truly shines. The opening track "Chieva" could be a song to a lost love, a woman who has done him wrong, until you listen closely and realize it's actually about heroin and kicking the habit. The description of the drug as a seductive force in ones life, it's power to make you love it and the way in which it destroys you all at the same time, has never been sung about in such an evocative manner before.

On "Downside Of Town" and "My Forever Came Today" Willy looks at both sides of love; when it goes sour, and when you're in the glow and warmth of a new relationship. Both these types of songs have lent themselves in the past to the worst excesses of cheap sentimentality in pop music. But in this instance neither one strikes a false note.

Maybe it's his gruff and raspy voice, perhaps it's the blues tinged jazz feel of the music. Whatever it is Willy's versions of the break up song and the finding new love song are far and away superior to anything anyone else has done in that genre.

Perhaps it's because I'm so jaded from hearing so many people try so hard to convince you of their sincerity when they squeeze out their love songs, that to hear someone sing low and natural, without artifice, in black and white, is a relief. Compared to the histrionics that passes for emotions these days in music, Willy demonstrates that the old adage, less is more, is not just a cliché.

Willy has always loved the music that is the roots of American pop music. Even back in the days of Mink DeVille and playing at CBGBS the band would play songs by Little Walter and other older blues artists. On Crow Jane Alley not only is the music steeped in that sound, but he has written a tribute to one of the greats of the Blues, who perhaps never got quite the recognitions he deserved: Muddy Waters.

"Muddy Waters Rose Out Of The Mississippi Mud" is about the Blues as much as it's about Muddy Waters, but since the two are almost inseparable anyway a distinction would have been moot. It also shows that Willy DeVille hasn't lost his love and affinity for the music that forms the bedrock upon which rock and roll stands.

Willy DeVille is one of the survivors of the Rock and Roll wars and he's come out the other side with his integrity and dignity intact. Unlike some other's of his generation or older he's not descended into an almost parody of his former self by fighting against the realities of age and time.

His music carries the scars of that battle, but that only adds to its ability to communicate on a level that is both personal and universal simultaneously. He has the ability to write a song that feels like he understands what each of us has gone through at one time in our lives or another.

Crow Jane Alley is the work of an artist who after thirty plus years in the business still has the ability to surprise and delight his listeners. Listening to this disc only confirms that Willy DeVille is one of the greats who have been ignored for too long. If you don't know his work than this will be as good as any a place to start, and for those who have been missing him, well you won't be disappointed.

Sign The Petition To Help Get Willy Inducted Into The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame At This Address.


Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:39 AM |

June 23, 2006

DVD Review: Puppets Who Kill: The Complete Second Season

Puppets have a long history in the entertainment lexicon of human history. From the medieval Punch and Judy shows of the English market place to modern times as cute fluffy teaching aids on Sesame Street. Marionette shows with their complicated string articulated puppet participants have long been things of amazement for people of all cultures.

In recent years puppet's very innocence has been used against us, and them, in a series of cheesy horror movies, where the puppets have become demonic creatures set on destroying humanity. Usually their emotionless, painted on features have worked against them in these situations to increase the sense of evil; smiles and brightly painted red cheeks in contrast to the knife that slashes and the axe that hacks.

But these movies haven't been able to really change people's image of puppets and stuffed animals as cuddly and cute. Walt Disney and Jim Henson, with Pinocchio and Kermit, have shaped the almost indelible impressions that we all have of puppets. While Henson's Muppets may have been invested with some of humanity's less admiral characteristics, they were still presented in a manner that made them seem cute and harmless.

It's that belief in the general innocence of all things fuzzy, cute, and puppet like the creators of Puppets Who Kill have exploited to make their venture so successful. The juxtaposition of harmless, cute and fluffy innocence and fouled mouthed, sexually depraved, murderous characteristics is the key to the comedic success of the show.

Cuddles the Comfort Doll (sort of like a Cabbage Patch Doll), Buttons the Bear, Rocco the Dog, and Bill the ventriloquist dummy are down to their last chances for social redemption. They have been placed in the care of social worker Dan Barlow (Dan Redican) at a half way home for one final shot at being reformed.

The DVD of their complete 2nd season not only shows just how unsuccessful Dan has been at his attempts to rehabilitate the boys, but how they have begun to weaken his own, already suspect, grasp on right and wrong. It also reveals how side splittingly funny this show can be.

No cow is too sacred to be messed with; as everything from necrophilia to victim's rights is fair game for the foul-mouthed miscreants to fold, stab, mutilate, and dismember. Bill's attempts to sue the family of one of his murder victims for damages due to the emotional duress he undergoes reliving the crime while his victim is safely dead, is merely the tip of the nefarious ice berg.

While occasionally Dan makes a stab at making his charges accountable for their actions, too often he finds himself either their unwilling accomplice, or utilizing their rather unique talents to his own advantage. When Buttons kills a priest, a custodian, and the police officer that showed up to investigate the incident, and threatens to implicate Dan, the solution is to pretend it never happened and never talk about it again.

These aren't puppets that are ever going to become real boys by being good like Pinocchio, or even cutely smart-ass like the Muppets. When was the last time you saw a cute little teddy bear dry humping someone's leg as Buttons is reduced to doing to Dan when he is denied sex for three days? Or a demonic possessed cabbage patch doll threaten to defile a male virgin? (Dan again) How about a dog with a serious cigarette habit (Rocco) and a ventriloquist dummy (Bill) cutting up a body in their tub looking for a diamond in his intestinal tract, and calmly discussing the contents of its bowel?

These are not your average family entertainment puppets. There is a reason they are on the Comedy Network, and not mainstream television. Aside from half the dialogue having to be bleeped, I don't think prime time North America is ready for the sight of a teddy bear going down on his yoga instructor. This show would not get past George Bush's new decency law as to what's acceptable home viewing.

But the humour is not just in the shock value of the puppets and their behaviour. That would wear thin after a while, no matter how funny it is. Some times sitting and watching repeated episodes of one show for the length of one DVD's worth of material starts to get tedious as the premise gets stale.

You would think that this would be the case with a show like this, but while shock value is part of the appeal, these are very intelligent and well-written scripts that manage to make fun of male sexual fantasies, religion, social workers, and a host of other subjects, while exploiting the obvious humour of a serial killing puppet.

It never seems like the characters are being foul-mouthed or deviant in order to milk an extra laugh from the audience. If that were the case it would develop into a one-note series that would quickly become tiresome. But they've escaped that trap by ensuring that everything the characters do stays within their boundaries of believability.

There is a certain illogical logic to everything that happens on this show that justifies everybody's actions. When Bill has lost all reason for living because he no longer is able to kill, it only makes sense that he will regain his joie de vivre when he leaves a couple of heads in the fridge. It's also acceptable for Dan not to turn him in because of his need for Bill to be happy in order to be awarded a grant for $25,000 from the government.

I'm not familiar with how television shows are normally packaged for viewing in DVD format, so I don't know if it is usual to run the opening for each segment, but that was the only thing that I found tedious. It would have been nice if there were some special features that included outtakes or background on how they work with puppets. Each episode's closing credits are accompanied by some outtakes that are hysterical, but they only whet your appetite for more.

The one special feature, aside from written bio's of the cast and crew, is an appearance that Dan Redican, Rocco, and Buttons made on a Canadian morning show which is cute, but not really that informative about the show itself. If you have the patience to read the bios you'll see that the talent collected for this series is quite amazing and features Tony award winning writers, and multi award winning performers. It's no wonder the script quality is so superior to most of what's on the air that passes for adult comedy these days.

Puppets Who Kill: The Complete Second Season is scatological, obscene, blasphemous, and brilliant. If you are a fan of this show, or have never seen it but love wickedly, witty humour you need to own this DVD. You'll never look at your stuffed bear collection the same again.


Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:07 AM |

June 22, 2006

CD Review: Pilgrimage: Mississippi To Mepmphis Aynsley Lister/Erja Lyytinen/Ian Parker

A few days ago an article appeared at Blogcritics.org where the writer worried about the future of the Blues. Her concerns were with what type of music the next generation were going to be playing and what would happen to the acoustic blues and more traditional variants of the genre.

Well Ruf records from Germany seems to have been a few steps ahead of her, as last summer they initiated a project that would see three young European blues artists come to the home of the blues to record. Aynsley Lister and Ian Parker are hot young guitarists from England, while Erja Lyytinen is creating a sensation both at home in her native Finland and throughout Europe with her hard and fast playing.

These three have been burning up Europe together as Ruf Records' Blue's Caravan for 2005/2006. Each season Ruff will take a group of blues artists and put them out on the road together. This time around it was decided to feature the future.

"Who will carry the torch when today's elder statesmen are gone? Who's going to follow in the footsteps of the B.B. Kings and Koko Taylors, the Buddy Guys and Eric Claptons?" asks Vincent Abbate in his write up for this year's tour. Obviously those are pretty hefty shoes to ask anyone to fill, and heavy expectations to put onto a group of twenty something's just starting out on their careers.

While they may not have the experience of their predecessors yet, they certainly don't lack for courage and enthusiasm. It couldn't have been easy to walk into two of the original studios where the music came from without some feelings of intimidation. But in the end it seems the Blues can win out no matter what the circumstances.
Blues-Caravan-2006_600
The resulting recording, Pilgrimage: Mississippi To Memphis gives answer to all those questions that worry about the future of blues being the domain of hard rockers only. It's true that all three young guns on this album can play hard and fast, but they also prove their sensitivity and understanding of the music's origins.

While the first cut on the disc "1010°" is a three gun assault upon the blues, with all three showing off their speed and power, track number 2 "All The Time" seems to rise right out of the Mississippi Mud with it's almost gospel tinged chorus, and slow, funky groove. Guitar solos explode out of the soil once or twice, showing that heat can burn slowly as easily as it can fast.

Songs like "You Don’t Know", "Too Much Too Hide" and "Mississippi Lawnmower Blues" show that these three not only have the chops, they have the feel, for blues. They can pull off the acousti sounds that will make the purists happy and sing out with the best of them.

"Blues Caravan" is their take on being three young white Europeans playing black music where it comes from. Not only does it prove that they have a great sense of humour, especially when it comes to laughing at themselves, but it lets them show off their ability to play a more traditional electric blues.

Are Aynsley Lister, Erja Lyytinen, and Ian Parker the next Eric Clapton, Etta James, and Buddy Guy? I hope not for their sakes, because they should be their own musicians and not be simply content to imitate the styles of anyone who's come before. Every musician has to bring their own stuff to the Blues or it won't be emotionally honest.

The Blues are an attitude as well as a musical style, and it doesn't matter how fast or slow you play the guitar, whether it's an electric or acoustic guitar, if you don't have the feeling you won't have anything. On Pilgrimage: Mississippi To Memphis these three young players not only show they've mastered the chops to play anything from Delta acoustic to funky urban blues, but they have the soul necessary to make the sound honest.

I don't think anyone needs to worry about the future of the Blues; we may just need to look further a field than our own backyard to find it.


Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:20 AM |

June 21, 2006

Satire: Small Arms Sales: A Reasoned Response

The problem with the gun control debate is that people react emotionally instead of dealing with facts and reason. Instead of careful, calm, and realistic consideration of the bigger picture they latch on to cheap sentimental arguments that are meant to appeal to their audience's sense of outrage and decency.

Whether it's a municipal politician trying to score points after an inner city shooting talking about policy that's either beyond his or her comprehension and ability to effect, or their equivalent at the federal level, they don't bother looking beyond the weekend's body count. They can certainly wax poetic and play people's heartstrings like a banjo, when frail, white girls are hit in the cross fire, although their silence when it's black people shooting black people is also telling.

But fortunately most politicians know which side of their bread is buttered, and who spreads it the thickest for them, and can be usually counted on to make the "Tough On Crime" speech at such moments. They use these incidents as opportunities to help foster their tough, I'll keep our streets safe image, which is what people want to hear.

There is always somebody who might try to make a stink about the fact the person was killed by a gun, but not too many people pay that much attention to them. I always wonder what they would have preferred killed them – a steak knife? At least a gun can be quick and painless and they won't have suffered like they would have after being stabbed to death.

Where people really hit their stride and manage to garner attention for themselves is when they take on the international trade in anti-personnel weaponry and small arms. Look at Princess Di, wasn't even married to the Prince Charles anymore, and got herself into the public eye by setting up a campaign against land mines.

Did she once pose in front of a factory where the workers are busy assembling the mines that are being sold around the world? Did she once check out the unemployment lines that exist in those countries and see what a boon to their economies it is to have these positions in the local community?

No she traveled around the world posing with peasant farmers, women, and children (probably even a dog for all I know) who have had various limbs blown off because they ran their tractor, or team of oxen over a land mine. This of course created a wave of sympathy for these people, who normally, the rest of the world doesn't give a rat's ass for. But because they looked so pathetic, standing next to pristine Lady Di., the guilt button was pressed big time.

All of a sudden it became the fault of the land mines that these people were getting injured. The next thing you know some international treaty is created that's banning land mines and putting huge numbers of people out of work. All of this because people weren't with it enough to check former war zones for anti-personnel devices and were losing body bits. It seems only common sense before ploughing your field where fighting has taken place that you should do a quick scan for mines. But instead of teaching people that, they pass a treaty trying to ban landmines and do a lot of damage to the economy.

That whole mess is a perfect example of not looking at the big picture and public opinion being influenced by a manipulative appeal to their sentiments. Just ask the famine folk, nothing works better to guilt people into ignoring their better instincts, than some pathetic, large eyed, dark skinned face wearing a tattered undershirt. Lop off a body part or two and you've got a spin-doctor's dream.

That whole land mine debacle has proven that the threat to small arms manufacturers is real and the industry is in danger. The nest big threat on the horizon is the Control Arms Campaign being run by Oxfam International, Amnesty International, and the International Network on Small Arms. Oxfam and Amnesty International are experienced professionals when it comes to giving the guilt complexes of Western liberals a working over and can't be taken lightly.

Five years ago the United Nations held its first conference on the small arms and light weapons trade, and the second one is this week. Movements like the Control Arms Campaign use these meetings as flashpoints to pump up the volume on their attempts to paint the trade of weaponry in as bad as light as possible.

Expect over the course of the next week to be reading about how small arms kill more people each year then the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, how they contribute to violence against children around the world (25,000 children kidnapped and used as soldiers in Uganda, children being raped at gunpoint, and watching their parents killed or raped), and that there are a minimum of 640 million small arms in existence today.

You won't be hearing anything of course on the direct and indirect effects on the world's economy that the anti-personnel and small arms industry has. Nothing will be said about the countless jobs it creates in countries all over the world, the amount of money made by the shipping industry in transporting the goods, or the numbers of people employed by those responsible for the movement of the weaponry.

Even the numbers are deceiving; 640 million small arms may sound like a lot, until you take into consideration the number of wars that are ongoing at any one time, plus all the standing armies, reservists, police forces, and paramilitary outfits around the world. The industry is just barely managing to keep up with the demand

You can't hold the industry responsible for how their products are put to use; that would be like holding car manufacturers responsible for traffic fatalities. How is a company supposed to know when they are given a contract to supply ten thousand semi-automatic rifles what the purchaser is going to use them for? Of course they have a general idea, they are weapons after all, but they are not in a position of being able to say are you gong to use these to form a child army, burn women and children, and chew veins in your teeth?

What other industries have such restrictions placed on them? None. Like all other industries the armament business strives to provide a product that works, and is as safe as possible for the people utilizing it. It's a highly competitive and cutthroat industry, where you are only as good as your latest innovation.

If the people at the Control Arms Campaign have their way countries will be forced to regulate arms shipments crossing their borders. Any type of control or restrictions placed on this industry will place many firms in jeopardy. Reputations are made based on the ability to deliver quantity as well as quality with the least amount of fuss possible.

What would happen if a company receives an order but is not able to fill it right away because they have already shipped their quota for that month? They lose a contract, and probably a client. Seeing how this is such a reputation based business, word will get around that the company can no longer meet expectations, and their order books will dry up and they'll go under.

This scenario will repeat itself over and over again until a once thriving business will be on its knees, just barely scraping by. Think what a devastating effect this could have on local economies and international trade. But nobody will be mentioning anything about these facts at the United Nations conference on the small arms and light weapons trade this week.

No they'll just talk about fifteen year old girls who have been kidnapped and help captive for nine months, and the children being conscripted to fight wars in the jungles in far off lands. What any of that has to do with the actual business of the arms trade is beyond me.

Logic and reason don't seem to have any place in the arguments marshalled against this long-standing and essential service. Make sure you think with your brain not your heart before you decide which side of the argument you favour.

.


Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:15 AM |

June 20, 2006

Recovery: Memories Of Fear, Fear Of Memories

There is nothing quite like the feeling of living in fear of your own memories. Not the things you can remember, but the events you can feel lurking like shadows on the periphery of your consciousness. It's like seeing something at the extreme edges of your peripheral vision; a teasing glimpse that plays on your awareness.

For twenty years, and more now, I have blocked out memories of my childhood; memories of being sexually abused by my father. Disassociation at the time of the events, coercion from my father at the time in the form of threats and promises, and alcohol and drug dependencies from thirteen onward all were factors in the repression and denial of the events that took place over a period of at least ten years.

While it may be obvious to most people how my substance abuse ensuered I could avoid dealing with realities that were unpleasant, in truth it was only was successful in masking the fact that something had happened in my childhood that I didn't want to think about. It was also an expression of the loathing I felt for myself due to those incidents.

The actual burying of the memories was caused by my sense of self-preservation, and the influence exerted by my father. You don't often stop to rationalize why you are an addict while you are in the process of becoming one, you don't wake up one morning and say, "I think I'll get addicted to drugs and alcohol". So even though the result is the same as if it were a conscious decision, that's not how it works.

First of all you're in denial about being an addict so you're not going to have "decided" to become one, and secondly if you remembered what had happened you would have no need for the addiction. The drugs and the booze are compensation for something that you think is missing from your life. They offer solace and comfort that you don't seem to be able to get from any other source, be it a person, belief, or endeavour.

You don't have any memories of the childhoods that so many others around you seem to have. Where they can talk about things they did with their fathers, you only seem to have blanks, and can't remember anything about being alone with him. Or when you force your mind in those directions you either come up against a sense of fear, or the feeling that if you say anything you'll be betraying something.

So what happened to the memories? Have you ever noticed in times of extreme stress that you may start trying to convince yourself that whatever's going on isn't happening? As if you believe hard enough that it's not happening it won't. But as adults our rational minds are far too developed, most of the time, for that to occur. (If it does we call it amnesia)

In a child whose mind is not as developed and socialized, instinctual reactions are closer to the surface. The younger the child the more they rely on instinct; a baby who is hungry yells for food until that need is met. So when faced with circumstances that are as terrifying as being raped, a child's mind will disassociate from the event in shock and fear. It doesn't want it to be happening so it isn't.

Now obviously this plays into the hands of the abuser, but most abusers aren't going to know this so they usually have some means at their disposal of preventing their victim from talking later. There are two approaches that I can remember being used on me: The "it's our little secret approach" and the threat approach. It doesn't seemed to have mattered very much to my father which one he used, as far as I can remember he used either one pretty indiscriminately, but to my mind the first one was the most damaging and effective.

You see it involves distorting and twisting the idea of love between a father and child. It plays on a child's desire to please their parent by insisting that all children do this for their father if they really love them. They also make it into their private, "special" relationship, which if the child ever told about would prove they didn't love their father.

"It's our little secret" makes the child an accomplice to the rape, and even a willing participant. So not only do they have the implied threat that if they tell anybody their father will stop loving them, but they also know, on some level, that what's happening is wrong. Therefore they are also ashamed of their participation and won't want to talk about it or think about it

Complementing this form of ensuring silence are of course direct threats about the dire consequences of telling anybody. From what I remember this took the line of, if you tell anybody they won't believe you, they will call you a nasty little boy, and you will be sent away to reform school.

You have to remember this was in the 1960's and early 1970's when this didn't happen in good families, especially father's raping sons. Who was going to believe me if I told them? In spite of this I do remember trying to tell twice, once to my mother and once to a teacher at school. My mother didn't believe me and said I was a nasty little boy and threatened me with all sorts of dire consequences if I ever said anything like that again.

The teacher I think believed me, but she went to the principle, who even if he did believe it didn't want to have anything to do with it and most likely shut her up because nothing ever came of it. Needless to say all that positive reinforcement went a long way to preventing me from either wanting to talk or even thinking about it.

Combined with the disassociation that blocked out actual specifics of the rape, leaving behind only memories of my father looming in my bedroom, by the time the abuse ended I was left with nothing but emptiness and feelings of unease that I wanted to run away from.

When I first started to recover memories it started with nightmares about my father appearing in my bedroom. Then came the flashbacks of the physical sensations of being raped. My body was remembering the things that had been inflicted upon it before my intellect. Over the past eleven years more and more memories have come back, and each time they are as disquieting an experience as they were the first time I remembered anything.

It's always the same sort of build up, the feeling that something is trying to claw it's way out of the back of my mind into my awareness. There is always the accompanying sensation of unease and nervousness that comes with them, but sometimes there is an undercurrent of fear.

Recently I began working with a new doctor who has been helping me deal with the resurgence of flashbacks that I began experiencing a couple of years ago. What we do is process the memory of the specific incident that the flashback depicts, so that I realize it happened in the past and isn't happening to me anymore.

But that means I have to confront the memories head on and think about them. It's the only way to ensure they won't come back in a form that causes me to relive them, to re-experience the rape. But that doesn't stop me from being scared of them. It will mean that I have to talk about the details of the event, or at least think about them.

Even though I've done this countless times already, it doesn't lessen the fear, or make it any easier. If there were any way of avoiding it I would, but the only way to destroy the power they have over me is by confronting them. I've already proved that avoidance doesn't work, twenty years of booze and drugs only put off the inevitable.

I don't go out searching for these memories, why would I, they surface on their own. As long as there is something that I need to deal with from that time, whether an emotional or mental issue, or an inappropriate coping mechanism, this process will continue.

Anybody who insists that a person should just get over it and get on with their life has no understanding of what it's like to go through the experience of gradually recovering your past. There is nothing I would love more than being done with these circumstances, but it's not in my control.

What enables me to get through it all, to conquer the fear, is the awareness that each time I conquer a memory it's one less thing from my past that has power over me. It's one more step on my road to freedom. Now that's worth dealing with a little fear.

What those new agers who talk about coming to the light don't understand is that there is quite a bit of darkness you have to go through before you can have any relief. The light can take of itself, it's in the dark that fear lurks, and where you need to travel in order to have any peace of mind.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:00 AM |

June 19, 2006

Chronic Pain: In Defence Of Morphine

I've talked about my own chronic pain a couple of times in this space in the past, so I'm not going to go into details of my own condition again. Having dealt had one case of acute pain cured, and now living with what looks like a far more intractable situation, I'm well aware of the difficulties presented by the circumstances of the condition for both the sufferer and their caregivers.

Sufferers of acute non-malignant chronic pain, in other words you're not going to die from it, very often have nothing discernibly wrong with them. Nothing shows up on any type of scan, be it x-ray, nuclear medicine, or any other test they can think of to inflict on the patient. As a result the sufferer is sometimes faced with the additional burden of having to prove the veracity of their claim to illness.

Most Family Doctors are not in a position to treat chronic pain. Even though they can play a key role in the treatment of a patient's symptoms, they simply do not have the wherewithal to do more than monitor pain levels and prescribe analgesics. But if a client's doctor is unsympathetic towards the patient, or of the belief that non-malignant pain is not worthy of proper medication, a person could find them self suffering far more than necessary.

It is quite amazing how when a patient is admitted into hospital, or even held in emergency for any length of time, and experiencing pain, they have no hesitation in giving them morphine to relieve their pain. They never seem to worry about you becoming addicted, even if you spend an extended period of time in their care. They're just trying to make you as comfortable as possible.

The first time I was hospitalized for my pain condition, I expressed concern to a nurse about being given morphine. I have a history of substance abuse and figured the last thing I needed was to risk becoming hooked on anything. She told me that there was nothing to worry about because as long as I was in pain I wouldn't develop a psychological dependence on the drug.

From my own perspective I've never enjoyed taking the drug, and can't see how anybody would want to utilize it for getting high. When taken for immediate relief it will most likely cause you to fall asleep, thus allowing you to escape from the pain that you are in. In some instances it can actually cause you to feel like you are disassociating, separating from your body, so you still know that you're in pain, but don't really care.

The best way to prevent any sort of addiction from happening is to ensure that the body is never placed in the situation of having to crave the medication. In the case of painkillers like morphine it is essential for the client who will be utilizing it on a long-term basis to have a pain threshold established. What amount of the drug will maintain a comfort level for them on a daily basis?

This can easily be established by discovering how many doses a day a client is needing to take of the five to ten milligram pills in order to be comfortable. Once that is established the patient is switched over to a slow release product that maintains their comfort level at all times. They are given a supply of short term medication for periods when the pain peaks – "breakthrough" – but it shouldn't be necessary for those to be taken more than once or twice a day. If they do start having to use the breakthrough medication more often than that, their long-term medication is adjusted accordingly to reflect that usage.

In this manner the person doesn't develop a "need" to take morphine on a frequent basis and the possibility of addiction is removed. Of course that doesn’t mean it won't occur. There are always people who will abuse a situation, and there are doctors who won't make the effort to work out a proper drug maintenance program with their clients, both of which could result in a client becoming addicted.

But since that scenario is a possibility with drugs other than morphine, muscle relaxants and tranquilizers for instance, I really can't figure out why people get so freaked out about it. It's not so surprising from lay people, I was nervous about it because I had believed everything I had been told about how dangerous it was, so why shouldn't others be. What shocks me are the medical professionals who are still perpetuating that myth, and refuse to prescribe it for their patients unless they are dying, and even then they worry about addiction.

I kid you not. I have friends who are palliative care nurses who have had to argue with doctors to increase the dosage of people dying from horribly painful cancers. Here's an instance where the best thing a doctor can do for their patient is to make the passage out of this world as easy as possible, maybe even prescribing them heroin, but they won't because they are worried about them becoming addicted. (In Canada, as far as I know-this may be hearsay- it is legal for a doctor to prescribe heroin in certain circumstances for pain, but because doctors haven't in the past, the pharmaceutical companies won't carry it, so even if a doctor wanted to utilize it for a patient now he couldn't because it wouldn't be available) How ridiculous is that?

Thankfully there are fewer and fewer people in the medical profession who have such antiquated beliefs, but unfortunately you still run up against them now and again. Nothing quite does your self-esteem as much damage as to be in agony and be treated like a junkie at the same time. It's probably no coincidence that these are invariably the same doctors who tend to say things like "It's only a little pain, what's your problem?"

A few years ago my wife was having one of her wisdom teeth extracted. To say she was a little nervous about the procedure was an understatement; she hadn't had very pleasant experiences with dentists prior to this time. Five minutes after he was started the dentist was finished and she hadn't felt a thing. He also made sure to give her a prescription for pain medication in the event that she needed it.

When she made some comment about the difference in treatment that she had received this time as opposed to previous occasions, the dentist responded by saying, "In this day and age there is no excuse for anybody to suffer from pain." Now he was only referring to dental procedures, which is a refreshing enough attitude on its own, but that should be the refrain of the whole medical profession.

With the medications at our disposal, and the increased sophistication of their delivery, (you can now get a morphine patch which works like a nicotine patch and the drug is slowly absorbed into your system that way) there should be no reason why anybody need suffer from untreated pain. Whether you have a chronic condition, or it's only temporary, you deserve to have your suffering alleviated as much as possible.

It doesn't matter if you are suffering from a chronic pain condition, or you are watching a loved one being crippled by pain, there is nothing worse than knowing that the means of reducing that suffering is being denied. Whether pain is a symptom that will clear up when a solution is found, or it is caused by some permanent damage to the system that may never be resolved should be immaterial to it's treatment.

Only recently has non-malignant chronic pain been considered serious enough to warrant specialist attention. But even now the only medical professionals who work in the field are usually anaesthetists. Since they already have one specialty, the amount of time they can put into this work is limited, (the doctor I see has only one clinic every two weeks), and waiting lists to see them can be substantial.

The fact that they have chronic pain clinics is a step in the right direction, but it's not enough. The study and treatment of pain needs to be recognised as a distinct branch of medicine, not merely the secondary practice of already busy people. Until chronic pain is seen as a legitimate illness at all levels of society, and outmoded fears and prejudices are abandoned, people will continue to suffer needlessly.


Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:50 AM |

June 18, 2006

NaNoWriMo Notes 22: Wishing For Quiet

In the past in this series I've talked about probably everything under the sun when it comes to things I consider pertinent to writing. From the insecurities that can beset the novice author to the excitement of actually finishing a final draft, it must seem like I've exhausted all potential topics.

I know that some of these posts have boarded on naval gazing, some of you have commented on the state of my belly button lint, and some may consider today's in that category. But as it's a key element in my creative process, and perhaps for others as well, I'll just have to risk incurring some people's scorn again. Remember it's you choice to read this, so you can stop now if you don't want to take the risk of having to read me baring my artistic soul.

The idea for The Paths Life Takes, the working title for my series, came from an historical event. But aside from the premise, everything else was off the top of my head. Unlike other writers who work from an actual occurrence, I decided to either take the easier, or harder route depending on how you look at it, of not doing any research on the circumstances, but completely invented everything from scratch.

Social customs, values, religions and modes of dress all came off the top of my head. In my wisdom I figured this would be a time saving device, as I wouldn't have to worry about anything like historical accuracy. Unfortunately, what it did mean was that I had to make damn sure that I was consistent with what I had created.

If I spontaneously had a woman behave in a certain way that I found perfectly normal according to my lights, I would than have to figure out how that could be justified within the confines of her society. Sometimes this meant modifying her actions, sometimes changing the rules of society, and on other occasions just having her be someone who allowances were made for because of her situation.

But those were just logistical problems that were easily dealt with by doing checks for continuity, and doing a few re writes. What was more difficult was the means I used for creation period. While on the surface it sounds easy, ( I may have described it in an earlier post, so if it sounds familiar you can skip ahead), the application can be difficult.

I write each chapter in the way I use to improvise a scene in theatre. I have a situation, characters, and information that I need to communicate to the audience. But instead of only having to worry about what my individual character is going to be doing like I did when acting, I have to be aware of the motivations and desires of any and all folk taking part in the chapter.

But even before I get to the writing stage I need to be able to visualize the scenarios in my head so that I can plot out what's going to happen. It's sort of like the storyboards that they use in film, where they depict the shot they ideally want to capture for a scene. But instead of drawing them out, I only have to imagine them in advance to be able to write it out.

In order to do that I have to almost enter a kind of trance like meditative state, where I'm able to watch a film of the action in front of my eyes. You could almost call it constructive daydreaming; in fact that's a really good way of describing the process because I'm fantasizing about what my people are going to be doing.

The problem is that I haven't been in school for twenty-five years and the circumstances for daydreaming seem to be harder to come by out in the real world. You would think that as someone who is disabled and doesn't have to deal with the workforce that I'd have plenty of opportunities for it as I'm at home most of the time.

I should be able to just sit back whenever I want and visualize up a storm. Do you remember the circumstances in school that contributed most to your ability to daydream? For me it was usually in what we used to call double periods, where instead of the usual forty-five minutes in a class we would have to sit for an hour and a half.

There is nothing more conducive to daydreaming than sitting in the back of a classroom, listening to a teacher droning on interminably while the rest of your classmates are in various stages of stupor. There was noting like listening to a monotone voice to induce the dream state I use to find. It was even more effective if it was an afternoon class, especially right after lunch when your body just wants to kick back, digest food, and not be bothered with the real world.

Among certain native tribes in North America it used to be that the only time of year that the traditional stories could be told was winter. In some places in North America you just don't want to spend a lot of time wandering around out in the snow and ice. Sitting around the fire listening to stories sounds like a much better idea than going for a stroll.

There's also a stillness that winter brings on, where it seems like the whole world is a lot quieter. Even today you get that feeling, on those really bright, calm days where it's so cold that everything seems frozen solid, into absolute quiet. It's no hard thing to sit and stare out a window on days like that and cast your mind into imaginary worlds and create.

But when summer comes it's a totally different story. Maybe it's the neighbourhood I live in, I don't know, but you're lucky if you can ever get any quiet at all. First of all from first light to dark somebody, somewhere in the neighbourhood is out mutilating their garden with some power tool or other.

That might not be so bad if it weren’t for the fact that they all seem to be using gas powered equipment that is twenty years old that when turned on bear a striking resemblance to a Jumbo Jet warming up for take off. Than there are all the do it your self types who sound like they've never used a hammer, let alone a power tool, before in their lives.

I can't think of any noise that can yank you out of a pleasant daydream quicker than the sound of a screw being stripped by a power drill. Except for the sound of a power sander being skipped across a surface, an angle iron bouncing along some decorative wrought iron, or the dulcet tones of a circular saw's blades cutting sideways against the grain. Of course they are just the accompaniment for the constant orchestra of weed whackers, chain saws, hedge trimmers, leaf blowers, and the newest offender on the block, the power washer.

If someone really wants to they can be outside for a good part of the day using their power tools the whole time. They can start with a little hedge trimming, (some bright lights in my neighbourhood use their chainsaws for this task) then it's time to cut the lawn, followed by trimming the edging, followed by blowing away the clippings with your leaf blower, and finally watering your drive way with the pressure washer.

If the noise of the power tools isn't bad enough there's the gathering of the men and their beer to watch and comment on the process of the job. They'll stand and yell at each other so they can be heard over the sound of power tools and materials being tortured. Even when the tools aren't in use they yell because they've become used to that as their means of communication.

There is not even any relief with sundown. That's when the tire squealers and drunks come out. (Who knows they could be the same folk, I hope not) We live about a block behind a franchise donut shop and all night long people are gunning their engines as they go in and out of the parking lot. They peel rubber at every intersection for at least a mile either coming or going.

On a good night we will only get the occasional gang of idiots returning from the bars talking really loudly and maybe singing out of tune at around 3:00am. On a bad night there will be at least one party that's been going since a barbecue started them off around dusk, and the music and voices have gotten louder as the evening has progressed. I we're really fortunate a fight or domestic dispute will round off the night.

It's gotten to the point that even when there are occasional oases of silence I end up spending half my time waiting for it to be rudely interrupted. It's making it impossible for me to even contemplate writing` beyond posts to blogs etc.'

Out of silence ideas are born. There is so much noise on a continuous basis, or at least there exists the threat of its occurrence that I can't relax enough to daydream and bring my character to life anymore. That hasn't stopped me from trying, but I'm having a harder time being happy with whatever results I am able to produce.

Without silence how can we ever find a place of stillness within ourselves that will allow us any sort of peace of mind? It's bad enough have to deal with the stress and anxiety of the world's circumstances and not let it affect your writing. But if you can't even get a couple of hours peace and quite in your own home because of people inflicting their obsessions on you, what hope is there for genuine creativity to take place.


Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:42 AM |

June 17, 2006

Celebrity Worship And The Death Of Critical Thinking

Forbes Magazine, the once dour and sober organ of business, has released what it calls its Celebrity 100 Power List. The rankings are judged not only upon money, earning power and potential, but also on the person's ability to generate "buzz".

For the second time in his totally unremarkable career as an actor, but highly successful one as a "star", Tom Cruise has topped the list. While his measly $67 million in earnings put him at almost poverty level when compared to folk like Oprah and Steven Spielberg (Numbers 3 and 6 on the list respectively) his off screen antics of jumping up and down on Katie Holmes, impregnating a couch (did I get that backwards), talking out his ass about mental illness, slandering fellow celebrities, and preaching from the bible of L. Ron Hubbard, have made him the most bankable star in the land.

Well that could explain his behaviour over the past year. Here we thought he was slipping the rails, but it was all a carefully planned strategy to keep him in the public eye. Goodness he hasn't been number one at Forbes since 2001, what's a body going to do? Apparently, anything possible, that will make people talk about him.

There is a wonderful moment in one of the Harry Potter books, The Chamber of Secrets where one of the characters lectures Harry on the travails of being a celebrity. "It's a lot of hard slogging" he says, "not just books signings and photo shoots. You've got to be prepared to do the hard work" In his case that meant tracking down, and taking credit for, the exploits of other witches and wizards so he could write a series of best selling books that would catapult him to fame (It's interesting that Rowlings wrote this book long before she was famous, and does very little if anything in the way of celebrity "work", letting her work speak for itself)

You see that's the whole problem with this celebrity stuff right there in a nutshell, that last little aside in the paragraph above. It is to the point now that we no longer know why someone is a celebrity. Do we celebrate Tom Cruise for his amazing ability to bring a wide range of characters to life on screen? Or do we celebrate him for his remarkable ability to play Tom Cruise all the time?

Who or what is Paris Hilton, besides being the daughter of very rich people and having enough money to buy her way into anything she wants? The only reason we care about her is that she wants us to and spends her parent's money to ensure that happens. If, heaven forbid, I were a cynical person, I would say that she has mapped out her "career" from the beginning.

First she was the enfant terrible of the jet set crowd that caught the eye of the gossip columnists. After playing that role for all it was worth, she started to shed her "party girl" image to take on more serious tasks like her roles in The Simple Life and House of Wax (or whatever that movie she just made was called, it doesn't really matter she can now add actress to her resume). Now she's a recording star, or about to be one anyway and hitting the talk show circuit to let everyone know.

But it's all really about selling Paris Hilton and maintaining her place in the sun for as long as she can. Pretty soon her debutante looks will start to wilt, melt, or there won't be any places left to tuck the extra skin left when it all starts to sag, and she'll have to retire quietly on the arm of some worthy wealthy type who will keep her in what luxuries are required by a Hilton spawn.

The last time we were so obsessed with celebrities was in the pre war depression era. It was the golden age of the studio system in Hollywood where actors were owned by the various movie studios and people like Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons were the conduits that fed the public the latest information. But it was all carefully orchestrated and the public never knew anything that they weren't supposed to.

Those days seem positively innocent compared to what happens today. Instead of just two ladies with gossip columns we have whole cable channels devoted to the doings of the celebrity crowd. Star leads the pack, but even stations that used to have pretensions to seriousness like A & E (The Arts and Entertainment Network) have succumbed to being ratings whores. They now show scintillating documentaries like Child Stars 2: Growing Up In Hollywood and Biography Home Videos where "stars" such as Danny Bonaduce (Danny Partridge of the old Partridge Family) show home videos of their current life and work.

Admittedly that’s the low ebb of the tide, but still the wave doesn't crest much higher with the higher end shows. From all the variations on Entertainment Tonight to the plethora of glossy magazines, ink space given over in newspapers and bandwidth on the Internet, it is possible to spend an entire twenty-four hours completely immersed in the un-real world of celebrity.

This article itself is no less a part of that world in spite of its critical tone. The phenomenon of celebrity worship makes for great copy no matter what your attitude. So just as much as anyone else I'm taking part in the feeding frenzy. If I were as truly disdainful of the whole thing as I said I was I wouldn't even deem it worth of comment, would I?

The thing is that it can't be ignored. Not because of all the press and flashing lights that drag your eye to it, but because so many eyes are dragged to it. Is there anything wrong with it aside from the obvious that people of dubious talent and abilities are being foisted on us and passed off as gifted. Oops, I think I just stumble on something there without even noticing.

"People of dubious talent and abilities are being foisted on us and passed off as gifted". Yeah I know you can read, and I just quoted myself, which is probably unforgivable, but it's an important point. What is this doing to our standards, or our abilities to make judgements on aesthetic matters? If you keep thinking of Tom Cruise, Paris Hilton, Brittany Spears, Brad Pitt and the rest of that ilk as the epitome of creative endeavours how does that skew your abilities to make judgements on what is good and bad?

For culture to progress or evolve, new ideas have to be generated that challenge and stimulate the audience. Risks have to be taken on the part of the artist and the audience to go places they haven't been before or a culture will stagnate by simply replicating the same product over and over again.

"Pop Culture" is a phenomenon of the past hundred years and as it has flourished dividing lines have been drawn by people on all sides of the argument over what constitutes art and what doesn't. While it may seem elitist to some people to distinguish between different types of music etc. there is a distinction between what it takes to create something original and what it takes to perpetuate a formulae for success.

Where is there room for the new ideas that develop a cultural identity beyond the transient world of pop culture in all of this? I'm not talking about going to see productions of two hundred year old operas at the Met either, because in some ways that's just the pop culture of the elite educated and moneyed class, and it's not the culture of North America either.

If we only measure success by the ability to make money and generate buzz, and that those who are successful at doing that are the ones with talent nothing will change. Unless we start learning to judge things on their merits we will continue to encourage the current trend towards striving for mediocrity. Nothing risky, nothing that will make people think, and nothing, that heaven forbid, causes them to feel.

If celebrity worship was the innocuous thing it was of the past, it could be dismissed as harmless. But now that it has become such an all-pervasive monster that it is an industry onto itself there is no escape from it. It so dominates the way we think and the way we judge that its full impact may not be realized for another generation. By then I really doubt that it will be possible to reverse the process and critical thinking will have gone the way of the Dodo.


Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:02 AM |

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June 16, 2006

Father's Day From Another Perspective

Well I see the calendar has made it around again to another one of our Hallmark holidays. The third Sunday in June is fast approaching, which means the advertising flyers have been filled with promotions for what you can buy dear old Dad. Power tools and the latest in fancy barbecue accessories are all sale just so you can show your appreciation.

Just to drive home the point each page in most company's flyers features a picture of a smiling, handsome man, with an equally ecstatic son or daughter perched on his shoulder. Happy families; they're like little scenes right out of a Norman Rockwell painting or a sixties sit-com.

For years these images used to really piss me off and at the same time make me feel an incredible sense of loss. You see, not matter how you looked at it, that depiction has as little to do with my childhood reality, as reality television has to do with my current reality; in other words, nothing what so ever.

In the United State there have been 40 million reported cases of parental sexual abuse, 15 million of whom were men. Considering the number of cases that go unreported because of the amounts of coercion placed on the victims by their abuser these numbers could easily be much higher. It is also known that males, i.e. fathers, have committed 89% of all sexual abuse acts against children.

Of course then there are the households where the father may not have touched the kids, but would routinely physically or emotionally abuse the mother. Or the father who was constantly drunk and the family walked on tender hooks not knowing when the next explosion would come. Living in fear of a parent is almost as bad as being beaten by them.

You want to know something really great that I just found while writing this article. Some states have separate laws for incest than for sexual assault. In New York, if a man rapes his daughter and is charged with incest, he could get away with only probation and might even be allowed to continue seeing his daughter. Isn't that a lovely father's day image for you-don't worry dear father knows best - let me show you.

I'm sorry did that make you feel a little sick? Well, that's too bad. It's time for North America to wake up and realize that this whole image of happy families is a myth for a huge chunk of people. 40 million children in a country with a population of around 200 million have been sexually abused. That is one in five people and those are only the reported incidences.

Do you know how it makes people feel whose childhoods were horrible when they see these advertisements featuring smiling Dad? First of all we feel like we have an incredible sense of loss at what we missed out on. When your idea of quality time spent with your father is him sneaking into you bedroom at night these pictures represent a world as alien as Mars.

For the longest time you feel like there must have been something wrong with you, that you didn't deserve to be treated with love and respect, or have the good times that it looks like everyone else is having. These holidays make you feel insignificant. Everybody talks about how the numbers of suicides increase around Christmas; well it's for pretty much the same reasons. All the emphasis on family for people who never had one is enough to make you feel like there's nothing to live for.

In the United States Father's Day was started through the efforts of Sonora Smart Dodd in order to celebrate the life of her father who raised six children on his own with the first one being celebrated in 1910. It wasn't until 1972 though that Richard Nixon made it an official Holliday, although what that means I'm not really sure, since you don't get time off from work for it.

Like all other secular holidays it has become co-opted by the retail industry as a means of encouraging people to go out and spend money. It's mainly due to their efforts, and the advertising firms they hire to create their campaigns, that the image of the ideal father who deserves hundreds of dollars being spent on him every third Sunday in June was invented.

The thing is there are fathers out there who are genuine heroes who deserve to be honoured every day of their lives not just one day a year. For those of us who don't have fathers we want to remember it's hard to understand people who wouldn't be eternally grateful for a father who treats them with love and respect.

Perhaps the original intent of having one day set aside in the year to honour the efforts played by a parent in raising you was noble, but he way it is set up now is more insulting to the idea of real parental love than anything else. Why should a parent need to be bought a gift for him or her to know that their efforts have been appreciated? Don't their children let them know in any other way?

Perhaps because I never had a relationship with my father that could be considered in any way loving or supportive, I have a different perspective on how one should appreciate the generosity of spirit that is required for one human being to devote so much of his life to ensuing the well being of another. Maybe it's sort of like that Joni Mitchell song where she says "you don't know what you had till it's gone" except here it's you don't know what you have because you have it.

When you're like me and the only ritual you feel like doing on Father's Day is spitting on his grave while you're checking to make sure the bastard is really dead, you're really aware of what was missing in your life. Perhaps before you go out and buy some expensive gift for your father in the next couple of days you might want to take the time to really appreciate what it is you have, and tell him that instead. I bet that would mean more to him than any gold plated barbecue set.


Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:32 AM |

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June 15, 2006

Viva Azzurri: Memories Of World Cup 1982

Soccer has always existed on the periphery of athletic life in Canada. Perhaps a little more noticeable here than in the United States because of our closer relationship with Britain. We had varsity soccer teams in primary and secondary schools more often then we would have baseball teams.

Of course hockey was the sport that almost every kid played as a kid, but we all played enough soccer to learn some of the more arcane rules like off sides and what was supposed to merit a penalty or not. But not even the arrival of the first wave of European immigrants did little too change the priorities of Canadians when it came to sport.

I remember during the seventies there was an attempt made to start a professional soccer league in Canada, but I don't think it survived all that long. International matches were few and far between, and when the Canadian team did play any games in Toronto immigrants from their opposition's country usually outnumbered their fans and the players would complain about never having home field advantage.

Even initial success of the North American Soccer League, which featured Pele as a star attraction, faded after his retirement in 1977. Soccer still had not captured the public's imagination in North America unlike the rest of the world where it reigned supreme.

Even the World Cup failed to make that much of an impression on Canadians for the longest time. Most Canadians used to the fast pace of hockey just couldn't find anything exciting about watching two teams of eleven men wander around a field seemingly kicking a ball about at random. The occasional burst of action would be followed by fifteen minutes of what appeared to be unsurpassed tedium.

Not having been nurtured on it as we had on hockey, or even baseball and football, the whole thing seemed meaningless. If you don't play a sport on a regular basis, or have continual exposure to it, it is much harder to understand and appreciate it without any outside motivation. I'm sure that if Canada had been more competitive internationally, more Canadians would have made the effort to learn about the game.

Like a lot of major metropolitan centres across North America, Toronto Ontario experienced a boom of European immigration in the post World War Two period. As the city was going through a massive building boom, and the subway system was being constructed and expanded. That meant there was a great demand for skilled masons and other labourers who we just didn't have.

This demand was met by thousands of Italian immigrants looking to put their skills to work and the Canadian government's active search for skilled labour to help with our post war boom. By the time 1982 rolled around Toronto had the second largest Italian speaking population of any city in the world outside of Rome.

1982 was the year that soccer came to Toronto and never left again. It was the year that Italy won the World Cup and it might as well have been played in Toronto considering the way the fever that gripped the Italian fans gradually seeped out into the lives of the rest of the city. In the confusion of the first round, the World Cup still managed to stay below the radar of most Torontonians who did not have a connection to a team involved in play.

But once the second round commenced there was no way to avoid getting wrapped up in the excitement. You need to understand a little about how Toronto is laid out to see how it was possible for this to happen easily. Toronto has three Little Italies strategically placed throughout the city. The original downtown location, one slightly to the North where people moved when they had earned enough money to move out of the "old neighbourhood" and another one in the suburbs.

Each neighbourhood has it's own block of cafés, bars and restaurants to cater to the community. Whenever the Azzurri (the Italian national football team) were scheduled to play, these streets were deserted as the bars and cafés were filled to the bursting point. At the games successful conclusion patrons would sweep out into the streets and into their vehicles and begin impromptu parades through Toronto.

Flags were waved and horns were honked as the caravans snaked through all three neighbourhoods spreading the excitement. Formally staid Torontonians were faced with choice of trying to pretend they didn't exist, or give and join the party. They camped in front of their television sets in the middle of the afternoon, something none of them had probably done for a sporting event since a decade earlier when Canada had struggled to beat the Soviet Union in the first match up between pro hockey players and the Communist team.

But now instead of cheering for their heroes to race up the ice, they were desperately trying to figure out what was happening on the screen in front of them. All a lot of them knew was the folk in the sky blue uniforms-hence Azzurri-were the ones they had to hope scored.

The dye in the wool fans had suffered through a preliminary round that almost saw the elimination of their stalwarts, and their chances didn't look much better for the round robin leading up to the final. Their first opponent was the previous cup winning Argentina, and hope was pretty thin on the ground.

At every World Cup one player will indelibly mark himself in the memories of the observers. Either through indomitable courage or goal scoring he will rise above the rest of the field and make the cup irrevocably linked to his name. 1982 was the year of Italian striker Paolo Rossi. Having just barely qualified for the team after serving a two-year suspension for his participation in a betting scandal, his lacklustre performance in the opening round had Italians calling for his replacement.

Even Italy's win 2 – 1 win over Argentina didn't do too much to improve the outlook. Next up was perennial powerhouse Brazil who were everyone's pre tournament favourite to win. They had been playing up to their billing and looked like they should have had an easy time of it with Italy. But it was now time for Paolo Rossi to take centre stage. He scored all three goals in Italy's 3-2 triumph over Brazil which guaranteed the Azzurri a trip to the semi final against Poland.

Thousands of beaming Italians jammed the streets and the first of the impromptu cavalcades that were to be the hallmark of all the ensuing celebrations took to the streets. Overnight people who had only ever memorized the exploits of hockey players had a new hero. Paolo Rossi had been completely unknown to most Canadians one day, and the next his name was on the lips of almost every citizen in Toronto.

Following the stunning upset of Brazil it seemed that Italy winning the World Cup was now a foregone conclusion. When Paolo Rossi scored both of their goals in their semi final victory over Poland he assured himself immortality. Italy's 3 – 1 victory over Germany, with Rossi scoring the opening goal, was almost anti climatic, but still set off a celebration that made the two previous victory parties pale in comparison. Celebrations started before the final whistle and continued on well into the next day.

It was Toronto's, and Canada's, first real exposure to the excitement of what the World Cup of soccer is all about. For the period of a week we got to live the excitement and drama of one of sports true world championships. Our eyes were opened to the appeal of what we knew as soccer and the rest of the world called football.

Watching a team like Brazil build an attack in waves, always moving the ball forward, and players with it, exerting continual pressure until their opponent falters and the build up ends with an attempt on goal. It was like watching the tide come in, ebbing back and than surging even further forward on each occasion until finally they swamp the other teams end and keeper.

Italy was more the cut and thrust of a rapier duel. Quick strikes; feints in one direction and moves to the other; until a man was freed for a shot through on the goal. While the Brazilians worked forward as a team, and required only good finishing around the goal in order to succeed, the Italians were dependant on the mercurial temperament and abilities of their strikers. As their fortunes went so did the Azzurri's.

Which is what made Paolo Rossi the centrepiece of the Italy's triumph. His first games in two years and his struggles to find his feet in the opening round exposed the weakness in the Italian game offensively. But with the return of his scoring touch in the second phase they became unbeatable.

There hasn't been a World Cup since 1982 that has captured the imagination of Torontonians or Canadians since than in the same manner, but that's not what's important. What's important is that football now means something more than three or four attempts to move a pointy ball up a field in ten-yard increments. Our newspapers now assign more than just one reporter to the games, who would re-write wire service copy or watch the games on television. This year the Globe and Mail has sent a team of four of five reporters to Germany to cover all aspects of the game: the results, the stories behind the scenes, and the local colour.

But it's not just our attitude towards the World Cup that's changed; it's our whole attitude towards the game. Parents are discovering what other people around the world have known for ages, it costs very little to outfit your child to play soccer as compared to any other sport. There's also the fact that unlike hockey, football, baseball, and basketball, there are more opportunities for all children to play, as initially all that is required is an ability to run in the right direction. (Okay that's a simplification but you know what I mean)

In fact, horror of horrors, more young people are probably signing up to play soccer in Canada than hockey. To outfit a kid to play hockey these days could cost upwards of $1,000 and than that will all have to be replaced when they grow out of their first and second sets of equipment. As they grow older the equipment has to become more sophisticated to offer the necessary protection, and becomes more expensive.

The soccer parent has to maybe buy their child a new pair of cleats and shin pads every so often as they grow. Their kids are getting plenty of fresh air and exercise and none of the strange pressures to succeed that hockey brings out in people. Presently soccer may not have the popularity in Canada to sustain anything more than a few teams in a professional league, but it's getting there.

As more and more kids grow up learning how to play and the rules become second nature as hockey did with previous generations they will want to be able to watch or even play soccer at a higher level. Canada needs to somehow take advantage of this development to encourage the growth of our national program so that we can compete on the world stage.

I don't know if soccer would have caught on at the same speed in Canada if not for the 1982 success of the Italian national soccer team. But I do know that since that time there has been a steady increase in the interest shown towards soccer by people in Canada who have no affiliations with any teams in Europe.

Canada may not have ever won a World Cup, but for a glorious ten days we felt the emotion and exhilaration that are the positives of European and World soccer. It didn't matter if you were Italian or not, the Azzurri were our team and Paolo Rossi our hero. It was truly our introduction to the glorious world of football.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:52 AM |

June 14, 2006

Putumayo's World Part Two/ A Short Inteview With Dan Storper Founder

Last week I published the of an overview of the music label Putumayo, one of the most successful independent World music labels. In the course of writing about that article I was impressed by a couple of things that I noticed distinguished them from a lot of the other companies out there working that market.

Most noticeable was that there definition of world music differs from other companies in that it does not limit itself to what is the ethnic flavour of the week. Certainly they are not stupid business people and if they notice an upswing in interest in Afro/Latin music they might produce discs in that genre, but they will not limit themselves to that one brand.

When they say world they don't just mean the developing world they mean different and interesting music that is culturally distinct no matter what country it comes from. One Putumayo disc could be the music of the Mississippi Delta, another the sounds of the cafes in Paris, or the latest innovations to the Samba in Brazil.

Instead of turning the music into anthropological studies by only using the oldest traditional music to satisfy ethno-purists, they provide a mix of both the contemporary sounds and the traditional. Ignoring what today's generation of musicians are doing with the music of their country and only focusing on the past would be like creating a disc of Afro-American music that is solely field songs while ignoring ragtime, jazz, gospel, the blues, hip-hop, and all other contemporary extrapolations from that original genre.

To my mind the former attitude perpetuates the "aren't the natives colourful" attitude that so epitomises cultural imperialism. It's that type of attitude that breeds superiority and a belief that we somehow are more sophisticated than they are. By recognising the fact that culture evolves over time, and reflecting it in their selection of music, Putumayo is giving a far more accurate portrayal of the people and the land that the music represents then many other labels.

There has been a disturbing trend in recent years for some distributors and producers of world music to attribute qualities to the music such as healing powers that simply don't exist. Predominately this type of attitude is taken by the New Age end of the market who will do almost anything to improve sales.

Putumayo may share that segment of the market with other labels, but they don't share the attitude. Instead of liner notes that offer mumbo jumbo along the lines of "let the dulcet sounds of so and so's pan flutes carry your spirit to new heights", they have information on the artist, the country and some history of the type of music you'll be listening to.

Each artist bio or description not only describes the music they play but explains how they have taken an original form and updated or modified it to suit the needs of their audience. From a Samba band in New York city who's sound is a combination of Samba and house music to a big band Samba orchestra in Brazil you will understand a little bit more about the band from the notes; at least enough to understand what to expect and to appreciate the band's objective in their music.

Putumayo's founder and president Dan Storper plays an active role in selecting what music to produce and which performers to utilize for each of the companies release. He works with ethnomusicologist Jacob Edgar, who is Vice President of A&R at Putumayo, to find the bands most indicative of either a style of music or a countries particular sound.

Initially the company attempted to record individual artists, but found what they were attempting to do, give people as broad a picture as possible of a type of music, wasn't being served by utilizing only one person's interpretations. A variety of performers allowed the company to do a better job of providing the overview that they desired.

While I have always appreciated the music of many different countries in the world, I have mistrusted many of the companies that produce world music. In far too many instances these companies seem to take from the countries who's music they are selling without giving anything back. This has been taken to the extent that some of them only use music that is in back catalogues and royalty free.

To me so much of this business has the feel of cultural imperialism. Instead of stealing the natural resources of a country, foreign nationals are stealing cultural resource and making money off the work of others in this manner.

When you do a search for Putumayo on line you don't find much more than sites selling their materials, reviews of various discs, and the occasional diatribe against them that's not substantiated by anything as inconvenient as factual evidence. I had been informed by my contact at Putumayo that Dan Storper was always willing to take emailed questions about the company, so I compiled a short list of questions that dealt with some of the issues that lie like a black cloud over the business of World music.

So here are my questions and Mr. Storper's answers completely unedited. I was impressed with his wiliness to address some of these issues, where others might have even refused to respond to them, and his honesty when it came to being perfectly up front about the intentions of the label. He didn't try to hide behind any great noble purpose and that in itself gave his responses that much more integrity.


I haven't heard many of your discs, so this may be a false impression, but it was also fostered by your catalogue descriptions, but you seem to go for a more contemporary sound, rather than the more traditional music. In the Dance Party series you have bands that incorporate hip-hop, funk, and elements of electronic music into their native sounds for example. Is this an accurate assessment, and if so why does this focus exist?
:
Actually, we try to identify songs that are melodic and, for the most part, upbeat. Some of our CDs are more traditional, some more contemporary (the Groove and Lounge series particularly) but ultimately we seek songs that have good melodies, are usually up-tempo and, as we say, we would like to think will make the listener feel good.

Are artists recorded specifically for your releases, or do you compile the tracks from existing catalogues? How does the latter process work in terms of right and royalties if it is utilized?

We usually compile the songs from existing releases we discover in our travels around the world, through CDs mailed to us, attending conferences and festivals, meeting artists and record labels, etc. Tracks are licensed from record labels or artists to appear on our compilations.

There have been accusations of Cultural Imperialism or exploitation, laid against World Music labels in the past because they take from the local music industry without giving anything back in terms of development of a self-sufficient music industry in those areas. I know Putumayo donates proceeds from each release to charities from the regions represented on a particular disc, but what about the local music industry? What sort of assistance do you see your label giving them?

Putumayo’s focus is identifying great songs and artists who deserve more exposure. Regional labels and artists earn money that helps them develop their careers and businesses further. Many are discovered by booking agents, managers and other record labels and have greater earning potential after appearing on our CDs. Finally, we try to support the communities where the music comes from by giving a portion of the proceeds from most collections to non-profits working in regions where the music comes from (typically about $5,000-$20,000 per album although much more in a few cases).

There are quite a number of "World" labels out there now, Rough Guides etc. What do you think distinguishes your label from the others?

DS: Hopefully, people have grown to trust Putumayo World Music for consistent quality, extensive cultural liner notes and attractive packages. I think we strive to provide a music, culture and travel experience.

Do you sell your discs in the countries the music comes from? Why? Why Not?

In most cases, yes we do. In some cases, such as in Cuba, there are challenges. Sometimes the CDs are well-received in the countries where the music comes from, sometimes they’re greatly appreciated in those countries and, in some cases, because we’re not usually picking the happening pop music of the moment or the most rootsy indigenous music, some people see us as outsiders picking music for outsiders. In general, though, the response in the countries where the music comes from has been overwhelmingly positive.

Do you worry that your non-traditional marketing approach-retail outlets, boutiques, and health food stores- might create the impression that world music and your label are only for a particular type of person? Doesn't this approach also run the risk of eventually satiating a finite market, thus causing sales to stagnate?

I don’t worry about that at all. The more people that discover world music through Putumayo in whatever way possible, from a non-traditional retailer, on the radio, by going to a festival, listening to the Putumayo World Music Hour radio show or any other way can only help to build the interest in and audience for world music long term.

Unlike other 'World" labels, the music represented by Putumayo is actually from all parts of the world, North America and non-ethnic Europe included. ( not just gypsies and other cultural flavours of the month) Was this your intended goal from the start, to be all encompassing, or was it more of a realization that World meant more than exotic locals?

The idea is to find music from all parts of the world that includes our popular American blues series, Zydeco and New Orleans jazz, etc. It’s not just about “world music” but music that’s well rooted in traditional but appeals to people with contemporary tastes.

I just want to thank Dan Storper for taking time out of his day to answer these questions. I tried not to word them in the form of an attack on him or his company, but to give him an opportunity to address those issues. Still I admire him for being willing to talk about them to any extent at all.

I have a confession to make. I'm one of those people who lumped Putumayo in as one of the bad guys of World music. Based on no evidence save for where I would see their music displayed for sale, I had dismissed them as just another lets cash in on the ethnic music craze company. But the more I researched them, and listened to their music the more I changed my opinion.

That they are celebrating their 15th anniversary this year tells you right there that they are not in it for a quick buck. What company that's only in it for the money is going to give at least $5,000.00 in profit as a donation back into the community where the music comes from? No matter how successful a label is, that still adds up to a fair chunk of change for an independent label to be handing out.

They may not have the overhead of the major labels that record bands, but they still have to pay for the music used, re mastering and recording, promotion and packaging, and distribution. None of those things come cheap and very few of the other world labels that work in the same manner, (some with even less integrity about paying performers involved through licensing fees), and have even more resources than Putumayo, do the same thing.

Neither is Mr. Stroper talking through his hat when he says that performers have received distribution deals through their appearances on his label. More than just one or two of them have been signed to record contracts here in North America after they had been heard as part of one of Putumayo's compilations.

There were two things in particular that Mr. Stroper said that I found most impressive, and both had to do with the intent of the label. In his last answer to a question he said "it's not just about world music, but music that's well rooted in traditional but appeals to people with contemporary tastes".

He doesn't look on other people's music as a museum piece that needs to be preserved under glass, but a living, thriving subject. Listening to the music on his company's CDs only emphasises that point.

While they honour the traditions that created the music they are also aware that the people making and listening to music have equally wide and diverse tastes. In order to create an interest in another culture's music you need to find the means to make it familiar to as many of your potential listeners as possible.

An overview of a musical genre should be able to give the listener an idea of all that the music can potentially offer. Not only does Putumayo do that with their overview discs, they also have created specialty discs, to emphasise a specific type of music from a region. The Groove, Party, and Lounge series each explore different facets of what various people's music has to offer.

Some ethno purists might have taken offence to his statement that " we try to identify songs that are melodic and, for the most part, upbeat… ultimately we seek songs that have good melodies, are usually up-tempo and, as we say, we would like to think will make the listener feel good". What's wrong with that as an intent. Music is supposed to enliven us, and it doesn't always have to be a downer to be good.

There is more genuine passion in one Afro-Cuban dance song than 90% of the so-called serious emotional songs I've heard on the radio. Considering the state of the world these days, what's the harm in wanting to bring a little enjoyment into people's lives, no matter what form it comes in. The fact that the music is expertly performed and played with exuberance that is hardly ever matched by our pop music machinery is something we should be thanking Putumayo for, and not taking shots at them about.

Not all the music they produce is going to appeal to everyone, I much prefer a more traditional sound in all my music, and so the contemporary pieces aren't my cup of tea. But to deny they exist because they are not traditional does a disservice to the people of the country the music is supposed to represent.

The Putumayo label distributes the music of living, breathing people, not museum exhibits. From Kathmandu to Kansas City they search for what they consider to be music that is both representative and appealing for genres ranging from African dance music to American folk music. They are doing a remarkable job of introducing the music of various part of the world to the various parts of the world.

I may not rush out and buy all of their discs, but if there is a specific type of music I want to learn more about, I'll now check their catalogue first.


Posted by Richard Marcus at 11:43 AM |

CD Review: Kacey Jones Sings Mickey Newbury Kacey Jones

I don't like giving something a bad review. Be it a book, a CD, a film, or a painting I always try to look for something positive to say about it even if I don't like it personally. My taste isn't universal by any stretch of the imagination, so I'll try and put a review into a context that allows me to judge it somewhat objectively.

In the case of a music CD I'll look at production values, how well the performer has worked within the context of his or her genre, is the performance of a professional quality, and, if there are lyrics in a language I understand, their emotional and intellectual merits. At least that way, even if I don't personally like what they are doing, I'll be able to have some way of telling people they've done a good or bad job at what they have attempted.

Maybe because I've been on the receiving end of critical reviews I try to be as compassionate as possible when it comes to reviewing something that somebody obviously has put a lot of effort into. But sometimes there is just no way around the fact that something hasn't worked.

Unfortunately that's the conclusion I've reached after listening to a new release by singer Kacey Jones. She's known for her comedic works in the group Ethel and The Shameless Hussies and working as a producer with the likes of Kinky Friedman. But whatever skills she may have exhibited in those endeavours seem to have deserted her on the CD Kacey Jones Sings Mickey Newbury.

Perhaps the style of music is beyond her capabilities both as producer and performer, she also produced all the songs, or perhaps the songs of Mickey Newbury aren't that good, but whatever the reason this CD did absolutely nothing for me. There's a fine line between singing with and about genuine emotion and crossing over into sentimentality and mawkishness.

Kacey Jones Sings Mickey Newbury falls with a resounding thud on the cheap sentimental side of the line. Swelling strings in all the usual clichéd places, meaningful vocal tricks that have been used forever, and neutered pedal steel guitar all contribute to suck whatever life out of these songs that might have been in them in the originally.

Mickey Newbury recorded most of his music in Nashville so I suppose that makes him nominally a country musician, and I think a person who is willing to commit to full country treatments of his music might have had more success with this material. But Miss Jones' interpretations have all the genuine emotional feel to them of a Las Vegas lounge act.

When I read someone like Kris Kristofferson referring to Mickey Newbury as "one of the great American songwriters" I know there has to be something to his songs that at least make them a cut above the average. Sometimes it's hard to tell by just reading a song's lyrics how well it will translate into something sung.

Reading the lyrics of Newbury's song "Songs of Sorrow" you can see it requires a delicate touch to support the emotional flow of the poetry. He utilizes the freedom that music gives a lyricist to evoke imagery and emotion that in the hands of a producer and performer willing to be a vehicle could potentially make them wonderful.

Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the style that people are willing to produce anymore, and so the music on this album has been encumbered by far too much unnecessary baggage that takes away from any power the lyrics could potentially have. One of the problems with a tribute album is that the music of the original composer is left at the mercy of whoever is rendering the tribute and the style that they think is appropriate to his or her music.

The tribute albums I've found to work best have been those with a variety of artists contributing. This ensures a broad representation of interpretations, and gives the listener a better opportunity to appreciate the skills of the person being honoured. If the style of one performer doesn't appeal to you, or isn't appropriate for the music in your opinion, than another might and you will have a better chance to judge the music's quality.

In this instance, Kacey Jones Sings Mickey Newbury, we aren't given the opportunity to discern anything about the nature of the music aside from the one note interpretation that Kacey Jones offers us. In spite of the musical variations, the bluesy "Apples Dipped In Candy" or the wistful "Ramblin' Blues" it's all delivered in a far too serious, almost melodramatic manner, robbing the songs of any humanity they may have.

Before this CD I had never heard any music by Mickey Newbury, so have nothing to compare the versions presented here against in terms of intent and meaning. Nor had I heard any of the work of Kacey Jones. There is no questioning the sincerity involved with this attempt to honour someone that Kacey obviously holds in high esteem. I just think it might have been better served be utilizing some of the people quoted in the notes singing Newbury's praises as direct participants instead of her singing all the material.

Given Kacey Jones' comedic background I would have expected a slightly lighter touch with her renditions of these songs, but unfortunately she has made the mistake of equating emotional truth with near melodramatic presentation to the detriment of the material. Kacey Jones Sings Mickey Newbury does not strike me as a recording that is indicative of either her talents as a performer or Mickey's talents as a songwriter.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:31 AM |

June 13, 2006

Caledonia: An Oka In The Making

There is something tremendously ironic about a white politician declaring that he's losing patience with Native protesters. Even funnier, in a really dark humour sort of way, are when they bemoan about how difficult it is to conduct negotiations in good faith with native groups. They sound like such victims, don't they the poor dears.

The latest example of this has been the reaction of the Premier of Ontario to the continued blockade by members of the Six Nation Mohawk reserve of Grand Bend Ontario of a building site for a housing development in Caledonia Ontario just outside the city of Hamilton. The people of Grand Bend have long established claims to this land under treaty rights and are quite miffed that a private developer was given permission to build a housing development on it.

Back in 1776 there was something called the American revolution, where the original thirteen colonies of Great Britain south of the 49th parallel decided they had had enough of being part of the Empire. Some of the people living in those areas hadn't agreed with the idea of separating from the crown and had fought on the losing side. Included in that number were members of the Mohawk nation who resided in what is now upstate New York.

The British government in recognition of service rendered to it by these people granted all the Loyalists land in their closest colony, Canada. British soldiers, families and the Mohawks all had to pick up and walk from New York to Ontario in the middle of winter, or make a perilous crossing of Lake Ontario by boat. The Mohawks were deeded two swaths of land in what is now Ontario as theirs to keep forever.

According to the people of the Six Nation reserve the land they are now occupying in Caledonia is part of that treaty land. In the 1800s that land had been leased to the Ontario government in order to built a highway, but instead of releasing lands not used back to the Mohawks as required by terms of the lease, the government seems to have decided they owned it, because they merrily sold it to this developer.

This was not land the government expropriated from private citizens, this was land they were leasing; i.e. they were tenants. Usually tenants don't go around selling the property they've leased from the leaser; that sort of practice is usually called fraud or theft. But when it comes to dealing with Native lands it's obvious the rule of law doesn't apply.

Over and over again we have seen this habit repeated across Canada, and probably the United States, of the lands deeded to the First Nations people being "borrowed" for a purpose like building a highway, and then mysteriously never being returned. The government will than "discover" they own these great swaths of prime development land and sell off what they call crown assets to make some extra cash.

In British Columbia, where this happened on numerous occasions, the result has been that as the courts have settled treaty claims, whole developments and suburbs have been turned over to tribes because they were built illegally. The real losers in this are of course those folk who bought houses in this development, because they now no longer own the land that their homes sit on, and there has been no means of compensation developed for them. In an ideal world they should have their money returned to them by either the government that sold the land to the developer or the developer who sold them the houses.

But we know that's not going to happen. Even though the governments knew full well they were selling the land without proper ownership or deed they are not being held accountable. They are the ones who are to blame for acting in defiance of laws and treaties, but obviously they thought that the treaties would be overturned in their favour.

And why not, no one has recognised the treaty rights of First Nations people in the past, why should those occasions be any different. But times had changed and the courts are no longer owned by those with the deepest pockets and just work according to the rule of law. Which how people in affluent suburbs of Vancouver found they no longer owned the land under the houses they lived in, but in actual fact it was now owned by the Nisga nation.

This brings us back to the situation in Caledonia, where since February the people of the Six Nations reserve have been occupying the land they claim as theirs through treaty rights. They have also blockaded an adjacent highway that has infuriated locals because of the necessity for having to detour around it for commuting purposes.

Since the occupation began there have been attempts by the Ontario Provincial Police (O.P.P.) to remove the protesters but they met with failure. Ten years ago there an unarmed protester was killed by an O.P.P. officer in a similar stand off in Ipperwash Provincial park and the police have no wish for a repeat of that incident, so they are showing restraint. (There have been numerous suggestions made that in the Ipperwash incident undue political pressure was brought to bear on the O.P.P. by the then Conservative government of Ontario to clear the park as quickly as possible, but these allegations are still under investigation)

For a time it seemed like the Premier of Ontario was willing to go the slow route of negotiations with the people of the Six Nations, but a couple of incidences at the barricade last week have changed his mind. People at the barricades roughed up a carload of American tourists, an elderly couple, and two photographers. It has not been reported what, if anything, instigated these incidents, but there have been reports of racial slurs being yelled at protesters on other occasions, and projectiles thrown at them by the public.

Whatever the circumstances the police have issued seven warrants for the arrest of people's unknown who were involved in the incidents. Spokespeople for the Six Nations reserve have apologized and have removed the individuals from the barricades so it won't happen again. But I'm sure tempers are fraying on both sides of the barricade and people are reacting when perhaps they shouldn't be.

But for the Premier to site those actions as a reason for losing patience is pretty lame. How any politician in Canada thinks they have a right to be impatient when it comes to negotiating with the people of the First Nations, no matter what the circumstances is ridiculous.

What about their impatience? Sixteen years ago at Oka in Quebec the same sort of stuff was happening when the town's mayor decided he wanted to cut down a stand of pine trees belonging to the Mohawks there so he could expand a private golf course of which he was a member. That result was a stand off of eerily similar circumstances as this one. it started peacefully enough, but continued to escalate as the politician lost "patience" and called for more aggressive action until a Quebec police officer ending up dying from gunshot wounds to the face.

Nobody even knows who fired the shot, whether it came from a Mohawk weapon or a police weapon. The police had fired smoke and tear gas towards the barricades, but it drifted back towards them, so both sides were equally blind, during the police's direct assault upon the position. Eventually the armed forces were called in, and the result was a stalemate until the Federal government bought the land to hold in trust for the Mohawks.

It must appear in the eyes of Native people that nothing has changed in the ways that governments treat them. What do we know about what happened before February when the barricades went up? Why were the Mohawks ignored until the barricades and the occupation started? Why were they ignored for so long after the occupation started? Why was this issue allowed to degenerate the state where the people felt they had to make this type of stand in the first place?

First Nations people have negotiated in good faith and with patience with various levels of Canadian government for decades, and more often than not they end up getting stiffed. From local tribes trying to finalise land claims having them drag on for decades, to the federal level where they finally negotiate a deal that might make a difference, only to see it yanked out from under them because the government changed.

This is like when segregationists used to accuse black people of being impatient for wanting to change the laws in the Deep South during the fifties and the sixties. Is it any wonder Native people are losing their tempers and taking direct action again? After having the majority of their land stolen, and being given tiny parcels to live on, they've had to watch as those pittances have been whittled away as well.

What patience and good faith has any government ever shown them? As long as your quiet and don't stand up for your rights you can be as proud of your heritage as you like, and we can say look at the all the good we're doing for you by coming to your Pow-wows. Nearly anything good that has happened for the First Nations people in Canada has come about because of their efforts. Treatment facilities for addictions, job programs, pre-natal classes, language programs, and cultural instruction have all come about because of their efforts.

The Assembly of First Nations, the council of all elected chiefs in Canada, under the leadership of Phil Fontaine, has been preaching patience and calm to its constituents for the last ten years. They have been negotiating in good faith during this time, in spite of all the occasions in the past where they have been betrayed. They thought they had achieve a deal last November with the Kelowna Accord, but that rug looks like it's been yanked out from under them by Steven Harper and his Conservative Party of Canada government.

While former Prime Minister Paul Martin, who had negotiated this deal, had entered a private members bill in parliament calling for the ratification and implementation of the Kelowna Accord, that motion has as much hope of being passed as the proverbial snowball. For any politician in Canada to claim that Natives are negotiating in bad faith, or to whine about losing patience is a disgrace and an embarrassment.

It just proves how little things have changed and explains why First Nations people have reached the limits of their patience. They are still being played for fools and their concerns taken for granted by all levels of government. I hope the situation at Caledonia doesn't develop into a mess the proportions of Oka or Ipperwash, but given the attitudes expressed by the government I'm not holding my breath.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:41 AM |

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June 12, 2006

Losing The War On Terror

With the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, purported to be the al-Qaeda number one guy in Iraq, the American military is working itself up into a fine old state of excitement. After military personnel combing through the wreckage of the bombsite found Mr. al-Zarqawi's diaries, phone books and computers, Major General William Caldwell said the troops had found a "treasure trove" and that 56 raids had already been carried out as a result.

That after a bombing raid that was strong enough to kill five people, and reduce a house to a large amount of rubble, soldiers were able to find diaries, phone books and one working database in a computer, pushes credibility somewhat. To believe that any of the information written down or recorded at this location is pertinent to the workings of al-Qaeda either in Iraq or anywhere seems a little ludicrous.

You live in an city that's occupied by one of the largest occupying armies ever seen and you head up the operations of the most wanted terrorist group in the world and you're going to leave information like Osama's home number in your diary? Better yet your personal notebooks are going to filled with detailed plans of all future operations in Baghdad, down to detail of everyone's name and address that's going to be involved.

Just in case your memory has really gotten bad, you also create a database that lists all the names, addresses, and phone numbers of all contacts. Even more fortuitous is that it's the one database that manages to survive the bombing attack. Amazing.

There's no denying that some journals or phone diaries survived, or that the American army may have carried out 56 raids as they claim to have in today's Globe and Mail newspaper. But did you notice they're awfully silent as to the nature of whom they've exactly raided and what the raids have accomplished.

Oh they can spout security issues all they want, but have you noticed if they ever do anything right they make damn sure we know about it no matter how important the security issue might be. The only time there are security issues are those occasions when saying something will look embarrassing. It's not quite as impressive to say we hit three take out Falafhal stands, an all night grocery store, and the guy's grandmother's house last night, as it is to we've already conducted 56 raids.

Sure there might be one or two genuine bits of information that they picked up, but remember this guy also ran a web site and most of the stuff he's going to have just lying around in his computers will be the usual propaganda garbage that is of no use to anyone. Why do these guys always feel the need to exaggerate the importance of what's happened? They've been doing it for so long now that it gets harder and harder to know when anything of genuine importance happens.

That they killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is without question, but you have to wonder why they had to do it in this manner. Why bomb a house when you occupy the territory the guy lives in. Why not just stake out the place and pick him up off the street one-day when he leaves so you can have him for questioning. If he's as important as they claim he was wouldn't he have been more valuable alive than dead as a source of information?

If the terrorists are able to pick up anybody they want at random off the streets no matter how well protected they are and hold them for ransom, how come the U.S. military and Intelligence forces aren't capable of doing the same thing? They don't seem to have any hesitancy about using torture on low level Iraqi soldiers to try and find out information, why not pick this guy up and try and find out the location of Osama or details of al-Qaeda's upcoming attacks?

What advantage is to be gained by killing one individual, and any civilians that happened to be in that building at the time? All they've successfully done is create another martyr who has died for the cause and created more victims to be held up as proof of American perfidy.

Haven't they learned anything from watching the Israelis attempts to cut off the head of the snake by targeting leaders? These groups are like a mythical creature where you cut off one limb and two more grow to replace it. You may cause a temporary lull in activities, it you're lucky, but the more likely reaction will be an increase in terrorist attacks.

In fact the first word out of al-Qaeda has been that they are planning a series of reprisal attacks over the next little while. General George Casey, the top U.S. general in Iraq, responded by saying he expected them "to try to do what they said" He continued by saying:

I think what you're going to see is an enhanced security operation here announced by the prime minister in Baghdad over the course of the coming week and a tightening of security in the Baghdad area. So ... it's expected, but I think we'll be prepared for it. But again, you can't stop terrorist attacks completely

I thought the point had been to prevent that sort of thing from happening by getting rid of this guy. Isn't that what this all about, the whole war on terror, a matter of ending the attacks and keeping people safe? So why is it that not only when they do bump one of these guys off they not only expect the attacks to increase, but admit that they really can't do anything about them?

Is it because that, even though they know this strategy doesn't work, they have no option but to keep exercising it because they've closed the doors on all other options, too securely too long ago, for them to be reopened? That all of a sudden if they change the focus of their foreign policy to more Marshall Plan and less "bomb them back to the stone age" no one will trust them anymore?

Or is it even worse and they still believe that they are on the right track despite all contrary evidence. The Taliban have regained more of a foothold in Afghanistan and are making life miserable again for the Coalition troops. A Taliban like force has just captured the capital of Somali and has taken over ipso facto rule of the country (including banning televising the World Cup which might see an end to their rule quickly if their not careful). A homegrown terrorist cell, not of immigrants but of people born in Canada, was uncovered in parts of Ontario Canada this past week. Although it waits to be seen how real a threat they were, the fact they exist at all should be worrisome.

In other words the conditions that existed five years ago haven't changed and the motivations, real or otherwise for young Islamic men to become involved haven't decreased. It's very easy for charismatic leaders to whip starving people into frenzied states of hatred against an enemy. It's immaterial whether that enemy is to blame for their woes or not.

Whether it's Israel, the U.S. or just the West in general, it doesn't seem to matter any more. We’ve all come to symbolize in the eyes of the terrorists the cause of their of problems for one reason or another. Our current actions are doing nothing to dispel that image among too many of the people who would be most likely to join the ranks of the terrorists.

Not finishing the job properly in Afghanistan was the first mistake made by the American administration. Instead of scurrying off to Iraq and committing all it's resources there, it should have capitalized on the universal support it had for the action against the Taliban and commenced with a serious rebuilding program. That would have been the heaviest blow they could have struck against al-Qaeda. Don't give them any ammunition of substance.

It might take a while, but people will believe their own eyes sooner or later, and if they saw American troops working with farmers building irrigation ditches instead of foxholes they would know who was and who wasn't the enemy. Sure it won't be universal, but not everybody is going to like everybody anyway.

But twenty-twenty hindsight is pretty much useless except as a means to hopefully learn from previous mistakes. I'm sure the last thing most people expect to hear from me is that troops have to stay in Iraq until the jobs done, but that's just the way it is. Coalition troops cannot abandon that country to civil war and the infrastructure disaster that exists now.

The quickest way out now is to put as much energy and money into helping the country rebuild, but not by depleting their oil reserves to generate the funds necessary. This has already proven a nightmare of graft and corruption as millions of dollars of that money has gone missing in the hands of the American civilians responsible for the reconstruction and the military in one part of the country.

Tangible proof has to be given of the American's desire to rebuild and not just to invade Iraq for them to gain the respect and trust needed to quell the terrorists. Withdrawing the troops without that sort of commitment will leave a vacuum like the one in Afghanistan that will be filled by the terrorists and will be further "proof" of the fact that Westerners don't care about Muslims.

The real war on terror has to be fought in the hearts and minds of the people living without hope in refugee camps and amongst the young men who believe they have no future. There has to be some sort of viable alternative offered to the false lure of heroism that is promised by the terrorists. If not all the victories on the battle field will be for nought, and all the lives of the young men and women that have been spent to this point will have been wasted.

It's still not too late to change from a war on terror to a war on the causes of terrorism, but we need to make that distinction soon, or we may find ourselves trapped in a never-ending cycle of violence. That should be the real terror we are fighting against.


Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:21 AM |

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June 11, 2006

CD Review: Full Circle Walter Trout And Friends

Sometimes it amazes me the number of truly incredible musicians out in the world plying their craft while flying under most people's radar. Many of them are people who are referred to as sidemen; those unheralded men and women who provide the licks for their more renowned band mates.

They are the ones who stand just out of the spotlight in the videos or during the concert, but without whom the music would suck. Occasionally they will be called forward for a solo, and their names will be announced to an unhearing crowd, than they will fade into the background again.

Once in a while one of these people will take it upon themselves to step out of the shadows and launch their own careers. Some end up not being able to sustain what's needed to carry a show on their own and go back to being support musicians, but others burst out of the shadows and develop a solo career.

Walter Trout started his career as a sideman in 1973 after moving out to Los Angles from New Jersey. He became one of the token "white boy" players in the predominately black blues clubs, backing people like Pee Wee Crayton, Percy Mayfield, Deacon Jones, John Lee Hooker, and Big Momma Thornton.
Waltertrout
In 1981 he stepped out of the clubs into the bigger venues when he was asked to join Canned Heat. He was with them until 1984, when he took the next step up the ladder by joining John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. He and Coco Montoya were the featured guitarists for the next five years.

It was in 1989, sixteen years after starting out professionally in the clubs in Los Angeles that he stepped out into the spotlight on his own. Signed by a Danish label and touring agency he quickly established himself as a major star in Europe playing festivals, large venues, and getting radio time. He release nine recordings in Europe in the 1990's each one more successful than the last.

His first domestic release in North America didn't come until 1998, and he is only now becoming as established here as he has been in Europe since 1990. At some point I'm sure he will become an overnight success over here, this amazingly hot guitar player appearing as if out of nowhere, after more than thirty years of hard slogging and great playing.

People ask me if they should call my music blues or rock, I tell them they can call it 'Fred' if they must have a label…the blues shouldn't be a museum…the music ought to constantly expand and be alive. (Walter Trout)

Fred is probably as good as anything to describe the music of a man who can play as fast as a thrash metal head one minute and be squeezing soulful sounds out a National Resonator guitar the next. His most recent release on Ruf Records Full Circle aptly demonstrates his capabilities by reuniting him with some old friends and comrades from the music wars.

Coming full circle he's invited those he used to sit in with in clubs, arenas and concert halls to share the stage with him and his band. So John Mayall is along for two tracks of high-octane blues-rock on "She Takes More Than She Gives" and "Highway Song". Deacon Jones and his B3 organ are along for "After Hours" and James Harman blows a mean and slow harmonica on "A Busy Man"

In 1974 Harman was one of the first people who Walter ever climbed on stage with in a bar-at the time he told Walter he might want to "slow down and get to know some those notes a little" On "A Busy Man" Harman and Walter do just that, and we see that he's can wring just as much emotion from a song one note at a time, as well as he can burn the house down.

It's not just old home week on Full Circle as some younger and contemporary musicians are brought into the fray as well. A trip up to Toronto Canada was necessary to record with the Jeff Healy Band for "Workin' Overtime" for some more supercharged guitar work.

"Firehouse Mama" is a duet with his neighbour Eric Sardinas and lets both men show off their talents on National Resonator guitars. A blues song with one well-played National is bliss; with two it's heaven. "Firehouse Mama" is a little bit of heaven on CD.

All in all Full Circle features twelve tracks of some of the most amazing contemporary and traditional blues/rock/Fred music you can hear in one collection. Walter Trout loves to play fast and furious but he's playing each note as if his life depends on it so unlike some speed merchants you can still hear that the music is what's important to him, not being a star.

Perhaps that comes from being in the background for years, where the only reason you're playing is because you love to play, but whatever the reason that love shines through loud and clear on this CD. The guitar work for these songs was done live in the studio. There were no overdubs and mistakes were left in on purpose because they were more intent on creating the experience of having two guitars playing and facing each other than on creating perfection.

Walter Trout may not be the household name that his more celebrated friends are, but what he lack for in fame he makes up with in integrity and talent. Full Circle is a guitar lovers dream album, and Fred fanciers will like it too. I highly recommend going around the circle with Walter and his friends, it's a trip well worth taking.


Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:48 AM |

June 10, 2006

Searching For Beauty

The world is a horrible place, at least if we believe what the newspapers and the politicians and the pundits tell us. Enemies are lurking in our own neighbourhoods waiting to blow us up with the fertilizer they bought at the hardware store. Terrorists are massing at all of our borders waiting to move here, have families and raise broods of little terrorists who will grow up to be the enemy.

According to some people last Tuesday, 06/06/06 was a sure sign that the apocalypse is on its way. You don't even have to listen very closely to hear the hoof beats of the four horsemen pounding down the highway. Look at the state of moral decline we are in; men laying down with men and women with women and being allowed to get married, people using birth control to prevent the spread of disease which means they're having sex for pleasure, and women are taking control of their bodies, refusing to let men dictate how they should live their lives.

There's violent crime in the streets of all our major cities, and the news show anchors take delight in reciting the latest shooting and updating the tally of those killed by gunfire. Civilians and soldiers are dying in wars everyday in places some of us can't even pronounce and Volcanoes are erupting in Indonesia threatening the thousands who survived the earthquakes that happened only last week.

It seems every month a new disease sprouts up somewhere that either makes part of our food chain a danger to us or another part of nature is our enemy. Mosquitoes and birds spread West Nile, chickens spread (and maybe cats) spread avian bird flue, and cows are tainted with Mad Cow disease.

Every month a new wonder drug is rushed on the market that will save us from some evil or another only to see it pulled a month later because it creates more problems then it solves. There are fewer and fewer days each summer where the air is of fit quality to breath and less and less places where it is safe to swim as the bacteria count in our lakes, rivers and oceans rise or used medical supplies wash up on shore.

Our popular culture, books, television, movies, and video games are full of images and themes of paranoia and violence. Instead of providing a relief or a break from the litany of implied danger and horror, they reinforce the perception that the world is horrible and ugly.

Perhaps that is why those few shows, no matter how facile they are, that bill themselves as reality do so well. The reality they depict is pure fantasy, miles removed from how our own world is presented. When almost everything you read, see or hear is guaranteed to trigger your fear and flee instinct anything that doesn't represent a threat will be welcomed with open arms.

What puzzles me, and maybe I'm odd, is what ever happened to beauty? I don't mean beauty as in the supposed physical beauty of some starlet and whatever enhancements her body has undergone, or some ideal specimen of a buffed male. But the simple beauty of just being in the world and enjoying the fact that you are here.

Does that sound all New Age and bullshit too you? Sorry but I can’t help it if on occasion even blind pigs can find acorns. In other words even New Age idiots can get something sort of right on occasion. Their problem is they present just as unbalanced view of the world as everyone else. Their so fixated on the "Light" that they're blind to the fact that starvation exists, or even worse that it exists because those people have "chosen" to starve through their actions.

If you're sick, hungry, poor, or anything else is bad in your life, like somebody is dropping bombs on your neighbourhood, it's only because you've chosen to hold on to a negative belief system that causes this stuff to happen. But if you buy into their way of thinking, and the key word being "buy" here, you'll find yourself, healthy, wealthy and bomb free in no time.

In other words these folk aren't talking about simple beauty by any stretch of the imagination. Most of them are just this century's version of a medicine show, selling cure all tonics off the back of a wagon. Their idea of beauty has nothing to do with the real world.

Beauty they say is in the eye of the beholder, in other words it's a completely subjective subject. What each of us find beautiful is going to be based on what our own experiences have been, and what we have learnt or been taught to appreciate. We create beauty through the development of an aesthetic sense that is as individual as our character.

But that means we each have the capacity, the power, to create beauty whenever and wherever we are. It could be the car parked next to you in the parking lot, the line of the skyscraper where your office is located, the way a problem you've been working on at work finally comes together, or the way your food at lunch is arranged on your plate.

So why don't we, each and every one of us, create little pockets of beauty for ourselves to help offset the ugliness we read about and see everyday. Is it because we are so resigned to our fate of being unhappy that we can't believe it's possible to have anything nice in our lives? Or is it because we just don't know how to exercise our talents of appreciation.

I think the answer is the two are interconnected. From a young age we are taught in a very utilitarian manner. What use is this going to be to me for survival is the question we learn how to ask. Our means to appreciate something are on strictly a functional level. Even if form is noticed, like a young man appreciating a classic car, function is still the priority: V-8 verses V-6, how many horsepower, etc.

With everything being classified in terms of usefulness and practicality, how is it possible to believe that you can derive pleasure from anything's appearance or intrinsic value? We even assess people in such a way as to gauge their value not the amount of pleasure we will take in their company. That may be appropriate for the work place where you need people to have specific skills to complete specific tasks, but not for a friend or a partner.

This is the world we know and have known since we began being educated in a school system and perhaps even earlier through observation of the adults around us. There are exceptions of course, as there is to every rule, but those people are different from the norm, and invariably don't seem to fit in with the rest of their classmates or in the work place.

For them to succeed they invariably have to seek training above and beyond what is offered to most of us, or seek the tutelage of others who think in a like minded way. They usually end up in one or more of those careers we call artistic, where form is considered if not more important then function, at least its equal.

This ability is looked on almost as an aberration in our society. It's not the normal way of thinking or perceiving. But that's only because we are told it's not. What proof is there that form and function can't exist simultaneously? That we can't appreciate both the practicality and the aesthetic qualities of an object is as learned behaviour as any other way of being that we have.

Being able to appreciate the beauty of an object while at the same time you're utilizing it does not decrease the amount of use you are getting out of it, does it? Stopping to appreciate the manner in which your food is presented on your plate before eating it will not reduce its conversion to the energy, protein, and carbohydrates your body needs to survive.

Beauty is all around us on a daily basis but because that is never reinforced in the same manner that ugliness is we don't even look for it. Not knowing how to recognise it only serves to strengthen our negative view of the world, until all that is left is to believe the fact that beauty doesn't exist.

Here's a rather simplistic experiment that I would like to challenge each one of you reading this to try. Every day for a week I want you to try and find one thing of beauty somewhere during your day, one thing whose form you can appreciate just for its form's sake.

It's not going to change your life or make the world any better than it is, but it might bring you a little bit of a break from all the other stuff. Hey, what do you have to lose? At the very least you can get the satisfaction of proving me wrong, but there's always the chance you might just see the world in a little different light by the end of the week.

In a world full of predictions of destruction, unseen enemies lurking around every corner, disease, natural disaster, and famine beauty may same to some of you a trivial objective to look for. There are far more important things to be spending your time on.

But don't you think if we learned to appreciate the world a little more and the things we've created, we might take a little better care of them and each other? Just a thought.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:42 AM |

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June 09, 2006

NaNoWriMo Notes 21: A Writer Observed

There is a certain sub-category of the species artist that exists in most societies around the world know as the writer. A highly reclusive creature, that appears to shun the company of others while working, little is known of their daily routine or working habits.

In an attempt to come to a deeper understanding of the subject matter, I have gone into the field to observe a writer in his natural habitat. The one who I have chosen seems to be fairly typical of the species, but we know so little about them he may, in fact, be unique.

His basic details are as follows. He is forty-five, married with no children, and lives in South Eastern Ontario Canada. Over the course of slightly over a year I have observed his morning routine on an almost daily basis. The following is a distillation of those many mornings of observation compressed into one typical block of time.

It is my hope that through continued observation and consultation with other experts in the field, that insight may be gained into the nature of this beast. By exposing his characteristics, and monitoring his behaviour patterns, it could be possible to draw some conclusions about this subject in particular and writers in general.

12:30am – 2:00am: After what appears to have been a restless sleep the subject gets out of bed and wanders into the bathroom. After his relieving himself he enters the kitchen and precedes to plug in his laptop, start the coffee he's prepared the night before, and feed some sort of treat to his four cats. He then puts out a fresh plate of food for the cats and seats himself in front of the laptop.

His first step is to read a newspaper online, starting with the sports section, then the arts and finally the front section. Occasionally he will swear under his breath or utter similar exclamations. He will conclude his reading of the newspaper by doing the crossword puzzle that he only occasionally cheats at. (Note: During this time he will have consumed anywhere between two and three cups of coffee, and two or three cigarettes. He will also have started a second pot of coffee while drinking the third cup. Very rarely will he eat at this time)

Next he will check both his email accounts for anything that he feels he should respond to immediately. Mail will elicit much the same responses as the newspaper, but also occasional laughter.

From the time he opened his newspaper's site to finishing with his mail he has consumed about an hour. At this point the subject has been observed doing one of a few things. He will either retrieve a CD case and begin to examine it, I can only presume he's listened to it at a prior occasion; a book which he will stare at for a moment blankly as if trying to remember what it is; or just stare blankly at his computer screen for a length of time ranging from seconds to minutes.

In either instant he will set to typing after his perusal of the object at hand or the computer screen. He will continue thusly for the next hour or two; stopping only to make more coffee, stop the cats from fighting or making too much noise as they race up and down the apartment halls, light cigarettes, and go to the bathroom.

At 4:00am every morning the subject stops and retires to his bedroom and returns shortly after with a pill that he takes with a mouthful of water.

Physical Character Traits: Hair and Body
As with any creature the subject matter seem to observe a set of physical characteristics that he is apparently unaware of while he is preoccupied. He utilizes a slightly old fashioned kneeling apparatus for a seat where his knees rest on a lower platform and his buttocks rest on an upper platform. This leads to a series of interesting body adjustments that he will undergo during his time at the computer.

Initially he will seat himself in such a manner that both knees are placed parallel to each other with his weight evenly distributed. His back is straight, his shoulders relaxed and his head erect. But it's not long before he starts to shift uncomfortably; first he passes the weight from one buttock to another as if trying to find a more comfortable position. Then he will twist his spine in various angles, rotate his shoulders, and turn his head from side to side all in what appear to be more vain efforts to achieve comfort.

Finally, when those recourses have apparently failed to achieve the desired results, he will begin to rearrange his legs. First he will remove one from its kneeling position so that the knee is at a roughly 90-degree angle to the platform on which his foot and the other knee rest. This seems to happen without his awareness because he will all of a sudden switch back to having both knees resting on the lower platform and make an effort to sit erect again. But soon the legs have gone back to earlier mentioned position.

Eventually he appears to resign himself to that position because instead of reverting back to the kneeling, he will merely switch back and forth between legs that are at the 90-degree angle. On some even more drastic occasions he will even rise up completely from his resting place and walk around the apartment muttering under his breath while keeping his hands splayed across the small of his back.

The subject matter has longer than average hair for a man of his age and at times this too seems to be a distraction and something that he must contend with while writing. While on occasion he keeps it tied back in a loose pony tail arrangement, other times he lets it just hang loose. It's those moments when his hair becomes an indicator of his mood and perhaps even his progress.

It might be of interest to pursue the utilization of hair in greater detail as a general area of study. Is there significance to the number of times a subject will curl a strand of hair around a finger? Does the tightness of said curl indicate an increased state of frustration or just excitement in general? What about stroking a strand meditatively while brushing it back from the eyes? Is that just incidental action or indicative of something more complex?

As the subject exhibits all of these traits to one degree or another understanding of them at a more complex level would allow us to perhaps gain a deeper insight into the creative process. (Note: I don't believe we should read much into the subject's tendency to occasionally set strands of his hair on fire while lighting a cigarette. I think that can be put down to his general mood of preoccupation while he writes)

Facial Manipulations
The subject has been observed at various times while writing to manipulate various aspects of his facial structure. Some, like the rubbing of the exterior of nose with thumb may be considered merely habitual scratching of little or no significance or pertaining to an actual physical discomfort of the nasal area, others may offer some insight into his state of mind or even the emotional fluctuations he under goes while writing.

He is often observed to place his hand on his face such that it covesr the lower half of his mouth on a diagonal down to his chin. This will when then be followed by moving the hand downwards and upwards along the path of his beard so that he appears to be attempting to scrub his beard from his chin with the palm of his hand.

As this is usually accompanied by a cessation of typing, and a creasing of forehead we should be safe in assuming it indicates some sort of thinking process is underway. He has been seen to affect a milder form of the same behaviour by idly stroking the edges of his moustache hairs with the tips of his fingers. That this action is always performed with the head tilted slightly to the left and staring into the middle distance or with eyes partially closed it can be concluded that this to is an indication of a thinking process.

If one were to be fanciful one could try and give a metaphysical attribute to the second of these displays of concentration. While the first has elements of frustration, the furrowed brow, the aggressive and aggravated motion of the hand, the second appears gentler and more contemplative. Could it be that those are moments of inspiration we are witnessing?

Instead of struggling with a thought as the first behaviour indicates is happening, the subject appears to be almost listening, as if some inner voice is communicating with him. This is of course mere speculation, but the differences in demeanour do suggest a significant shift in mood and temperament that lend credence to that observation. Perhaps a more in depth study of the differences between beard and moustache manipulation could reveal further details.

Some actions involving the face and the hands are more prosaic than others. The vigorous "washing" motion wherein both hands are placed to cover the entire face and scrub up and down over the whole surface, including under the glasses would appear to be just a method of reviving tired and perhaps itchy eyes and invigorating the skin in an effort to curb fatigue.

Rubbing the forehead across its breadth with thumb and first two fingers, followed by inserting the same digits under the glasses to rub at the point where the base of the nose and the eyes meet is more than likely for similar reasons. More mysterious is the act of rubbing the forehead with the index finger from the space between the eyebrows to the hairline.

While some cultures maintain that this area is home to the "third eye", an access point for spiritual insight, it does not appear that this action accomplishes anything of importance and should only be construed as a habitual activity like the his ear scratching or nose rubbing.

Finishing and Conclusion
Approximately two hours after the subject begins his typing he starts to show signs that he will not be continuing much longer. One of the sure signs that the period of activity is drawing to a close is the increased ratio of physical movements and facial manipulations in proportion to the amount of writing taking place; the more extraneous activity the less writing.

This should not be seen as an indication of completion on the subject's part, instead this would appear to be the limit of his ability to stay at his laptop. If he has managed to complete something during this time, he will stop and prepare his first food of the day. Once he has completed those preparations he returns to the computer and proof reads, making any edits and changes that he sees fit.

The subject accomplishes this by the simple expedient of reading what he has written out loud to himself. He has been observed to stop in mid sentence, re write a segment, and than continue reading as if he hadn't been interrupted.

After an extensive period of observation, slightly over 12 months, the one conclusion that stands out most obviously is that the subject is a creature of almost obsessive habit. In all this time he has rarely ever deviated from the proceedings described above, down to the smallest detail of physical activity.

On those occasions where he has been forced to alter his routine he is visibly discomfited and highly stressed. Although generalizations based on the observations of one individual of a species can be erroneous, if this writer's behaviour is indicative of others, they are most definitely creatures of very fixed habits. This almost compulsive need for routine suggests a need for familiarity in order for the creative process to proceed smoothly.

In an attempt to understand the subject more completely I will expand my range of study to see if the patterns continue throughout the day during his other periods of activity. If these characteristics are consistent it may be necessary to consider his behaviour not just compulsive but obsessive.

An argument could be made that the desire, and means of fulfilling said desire, to write is a form of psychological illness and a modification of the DSM IV (book listing symptoms and diagnostic techniques for physiological ailments) may be required to include its symptoms to facilitate future diagnosis. Before that conclusion is reached further study is required, and perhaps other subjects considered for observation.

This is a field that cries out for further study and intense analysis. I hope that my small contribution is a step towards helping us all understand the strange and complex creature that exists among us called a writer.


Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:44 AM |

June 08, 2006

CD Review: Texas Roadhouse Favourites Commander Cody And His Lost Planet Airmen

For most people San Francisco and the 1960's are synonymous with flower power, drugs and psychedelic music. While the perception may have been that all the bands bore names like Strawberry Alarm Clock, or Quicksilver Messenger Service and played songs with names like "Incense and Peppermint". Trippy lyrics, and strange soaring guitar noises that featured lots of feedback were supposed to be typical of the song that was born on the streets of San Francisco.

But there was another guitar, and another sound that was being explored at the same time. The guitar was pedal steel and the sound was country rock. Of course there was nothing new about country rock; that was the sound of Elvis when he stepped into the Sun Record studios in Memphis, but a label was needed to differentiate this sound from either the psychedelic or the heavier blues base of straight ahead rock and roll.

This tag was slapped on groups ranging from The Eagles to The Byrds. It was The Byrds in 1968 that became the first big name band to foray into country rock. After one of their major line up shuffles they ended up with Graham Parsons on keyboards, and he picked them up and dragged and them down to Nashville where they became one of the first group of long hairs to perform on the stage of the Grand Ol' Opry.

Parsons left the Byrds for the Flying Burrito Brothers and continued along in a pure country vain utilizing the instruments previously always associated with the sound of Nashville not Ashbury. Pedal steel, fiddles and mandolins became acceptable instruments to show up in songs then.

While people like Parsons were going pure country and other bands like The Eagles would veer towards a more popular sound, a third option was being exploited by a group of guys who had moved out en masse from Ann Arbour Michigan. Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen were one of the first honky-tonk country rock bands from that period.

Covering both country and classic rock and roll hits, they would give them their own bluesy, roadhouse treatment, turning almost any song into a rollicking good time. Their first big hit was a cover of the song "Hot Rod Lincoln" that had been a rock-a-billy hit in the 1950's.

George Frayne was the prime mover behind the band and took the name of Commander Cody. He has led the band through various incarnations and a multitude of line up changes. The Commander and his boys were never a huge commercial success, but that doesn't stop their music from being a rollicking good time.

As with a lot of bands like this, high energy and infectious, their live performances would probably have far outdistanced their studio albums in terms of energy and listener appreciation. Therefore the release of Texas Roadhouse Favourites on the Music Album label is a treat for both new and old fans of the Commander.

Back in the mid – seventies they released Deep In The Heart Of Texas which had been recorded live at the famous Armadillo World Headquarters bar. The band wanted to release all the material recorded as a double album, but their label at the time didn't like the idea. While now, close to thirty years after the fact, those left over tracks have been released as new collection.

There's nothing second rate about the material on Texas Roadhouse Favourites. It's not like these songs weren't good enough technically or musically to be released originally, just the label hadn't liked the idea of a double live album. The sound is good and clear, occasionally a vocal is lost, but that's more the singer missing the microphone than anything else and the material is awesome.

Texas Roadhouse Favourites starts off with a great rocking version of the old Carl Perkins tune "Blue Suede Shoes" and doesn't once lose momentum. Even the slower, purer country tunes like "What Made Milwaukee Famous" and "Wine, Wine, Wine" don't let the energy sag. As a band the energy they exude is not dependant on speed or loudness but on their commitment to playing great music with as much heart and soul as they can muster.

What made the studio to decide to exclude "Hot Rod Lincoln" from the original recording I don't know, but their loss is of course our gain. Having heard this song so many times growing up, listening to it live makes it all the more fun.

Fun. How long has it been since you have just had fun listening to a disc? When was the last time you just plunked something down in your disc player for the sheer fun of bouncing around the room with an idiot grin on your face? Song titles like "Milk Cow Blues", and "Nothin' Shakin' (But Just The Leaves On The Trees" can't help but make you smile before you even listen to the tracks.

It's funny how you hear about all these bands who feel like they've made this big discovery by playing what they call roots music when thirty years ago Commander Cody were playing the same stuff. Listening to these guys cut it up at the Armadillo World Headquarters on Texas Roadhouse Favourites is as close as most of us will come to hearing the Commander and his crew live. This is an experience not to be missed.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:33 AM |

June 07, 2006

Traditional Families Under Attack Says The Vatican

(The Vatican issued a statement on Tuesday declaring that the Traditional family has never been so threatened. The document was issued by The Pontifical Council for the Family whose head, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, is one of the strongest opponents of the use of condoms)

Raise the drawbridges, lower the gates and deploy the anti personnel mines. This is an immediate call to arms for all men, women and children. You are in danger of attack by forces that are threatening your very existence. Mom and Dad, Dick and Jane, and even Spot, it’s time to stand up and be counted.

The traditional family is under siege. Everywhere you look the forces of evil are approaching. They'll threaten you with condoms; preach equal rights, and horrors of horrors family planning. If we are not careful they will continue the degradation of our society that began with the abolition of slavery and giving women the vote.

Look at all the problems that abolishing slavery caused. Civil rights marches, riots in the streets, desegregation, and the demand to paid a fair wage. Why it practically ruined the economy. Affirmative action drove the final nails into the coffin of huge profits and equal payment for equal work was the first shovel full of dirt on the lid.

If it wasn't for the developing world and the opportunities to exploit workers there, industry wouldn't be able to afford to pay their ten percent of all profits to us. Think of the horrible consequences if we hadn't been able to quash those radical priests in South America. Now at least the peasants know their lot is to suffer here on earth and receive pie in the sky when they die.

We'll probably never be able to recover from giving woman the right to vote. All of our problems can be traced back to that moment of infamy. If they had never been allowed to vote they would have never started to think for themselves, which means they would have never become desirous of an education.

Oh to live in the Muslim world where they know how to deal with their women. That little trollop in Iran who dared deny a man access to her is only getting what's coming to her, what so many of them deserve right here. Can you imagine that a woman can now charge her God appointed lord and master, her husband, with rape if he tries to do his duty and procreate and she does want to.

A woman's purpose is to breed new souls for God, nothing else. She puts herself above her station in life, the foul temptress, if she thinks she's good for anything else. Remember husbands the serpent is a wily and devious master, and the apple can come in many forms. Who knows what words are being whispered in her ear right now!

Oh the perfidy of a world that would deny a man his rightful place as king in his own castle. First it was allowing women to vote, then to enter the work place, only to see them demand to be educated en mass at the same schools as you. The end result has been to fill their heads with dangerous ideas about equality and freedom.

Didn't they know how good they had it, only having to be the loving wife, staying at home producing a child a year, keeping your clothes and house clean, and preparing all your meals. It was that forked tongue demon breathing foul words of temptation into her ear that's caused all this. How else can you explain the elimination of Obey from the marriage vows? What is the point of marrying them if they are not forced to obey our every whim and fancy?

We’ve all seen the result of this: birth control. Is there nothing more evil in the world than a woman deciding she does not want to do the only thing she is truly good for? Why would God have given us the means to have sexual intercourse if not to attempt to produce children at each congress? Do they think that sex is supposed to be for pleasure?

Utilizing birth control means you are debasing your body by allowing it to be used for purposes other than procreation. Whether a condom or a pill its all the same thing, stealing potential souls from God. Do you collude with your wife in being a soul thief? Because if you do, you are contributing to the undermining of traditional family values by ignoring the true reasons for family: Going forth and multiplying.

The Holy Father did not say go out and spread your seed in wombs made fallow by chemicals, catch it in a rubber sheath, or kill it with a foam. He has not sanctified your union so that you can enjoy each other's bodies. No, Holy Matrimony is so you can have children sanctified by Him so they may be baptized, allowing their souls to go to heaven and His blessed company.

But what about disease you ask, shouldn't people use condoms when they are having sex with someone they do not know well? The answer is they shouldn't be having sex with anyone but their marital partner so why should they have to worry about disease. Those who do, get what they deserve, it is their punishment for breaking the rules of God.

But, no matter how vile any of those transgressions may seem, there is worse yet. The final death knell of the traditional family has been rung by those misguided secular rulers who think that people of different sexual orientation have rights like the rest of us. To legalize homosexuality in all its perversion was bad enough. Granting them equality of status and protection under the law from discrimination was the next step on the road to Hell.

But now they openly mock our sacred institution by allowing these abominations to call themselves married. How can they marry when they can't breed? What purpose could be served by sanctifying a union of those whose sperm is as wasted as if it were spent through the sin of masturbation. There is no function to their sexual act; it does nothing to fulfill their obligation to provide God with souls.

What further abuse will they heap upon our beleaguered institutions and sanctity of Mom, Dad, Dick, Jane, Spot and two cars in the drive way in suburbia? Will they be allowing men and women to be wedding goats next? Isn't it bad enough that your neighbours could turn out to be a same sex couple without having to worry about whether the goat next door that's grazing is actually your new neighbour's spouse?

It is time for all families in the tradition of Ward and June Cleaver to stand up and be counted. Defend your sacred ground against those forces that are already set on destroying our sit-com reality and ensure that no new dilutions of your marriage vows can occur.

Can you picture a neighbourhood barbecue and having to try and make sure that no one wants to cook your neighbour's wife? If for no other reason, this madness must be stopped now. Let's turn back the clock as far as we can. If faux Islamic countries like Iran can pretend the freedoms of the twentieth century never happened, why can't we?


Posted by Richard Marcus at 09:56 AM |

CD Review: Double Dynamite Sam And Dave

It's hard to believe sometimes that Rhythm and Blues was more than just the pabulum that you hear on Adult Easy Listening stations across North America these days. Or that Soul music had soul and was not being mass produced for use in cheesy Hollywood romantic comedies and afternoon soap operas.

But what they refer to as Rhythm and Blues (or R&B) and Soul now-a-days has about as much in common with the music those terms originally designated as Barry Manilow has with Axel Rose. Throw anything by Sam Cooke into your compact disc player and I defy you to be able to stay seated during "Chain Gang", "Bring It On Home To Me", or "Twisting The Night Away" Compared to the over produced, false emotions, and swelling strings that waft out of radios these days, this stuff is as rough as sand paper. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that all the musicians played instruments. Not a drum machine or tape loop to be seen amongst Sam's equipment.

What separated R&B from the blues was that big R before the B. While the blues rose on up out of the drudgery of the cotton fields, R&B flew out of the celebration of the Church. Listen to any Southern Baptist church choir when they cut lose and you'll recognise everything you love about R&B. Of all the music that originated with African Americans, Soul and R&B are the two where the influences of gospel music are the most noticeable.

Not surprisingly most of the first wave of R&B performers also came directly from the church choir or a gospel group to the secular stage. In the late fifties Black musicians (and white-look at Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis' gospel connections) began leaving their church choirs to pursue careers in popular music. Along with Sam Cooke were people like Aretha Franklin, Samuel Moore and David Prater successfully making the move into the mainstream.

Back in 1949 it was Jerry Wexler who first coined the term Rhythm and Blues to replace the more offensive term race music for the Billboard charts. It only seems appropriate that it was Jerry who signed the last two men in the above list to a record contract with Stax records as the duo Sam and Dave in 1965.

At the time producing duties at Stax, which was Atlantic Records Memphis division, were being handled by Isaac Hayes and David Porter. The combination of Sam and Dave and these two producers was responsible for some of the most instantly recognizable Soul/R&B hits to this day. "Hold On! I'm A Comin'" and "Soul Man" set a standard for mainstream Rhythm and Blues that has not been equalled.

Brassy horn sections, driving bass lines, and just enough sexuality to make them the tiniest bit titillating made them perfect for radio and popular acceptance. They may not have had the down and dirty appeal of James Brown, or the power of Wilson Pickett and Al Green, but they had a toughness that set them apart from the even more packaged sound of Motown signed singers.

Sam and Dave were far more than two hit wonders; in fact they had in the course of their relatively short career ten top twenty hits, all of them made while working with the team of Isaac Hayes and David Porter. For those of you who haven't had the opportunity to add any of their music to your collection, the American Legends label has just released a collection of digitally remastered hits called Double Dynamite

As a sampler of their career, and a sampler of how soul and R&B don’t have to surrender any of their heart and still be popular, Double Dynamite is invaluable. Of course it contains the hits "Soul Man" and "Hold On! I'm Comin'", but it also includes the eight other songs of theirs that made it into the top twenty during their career.

"When Something Is Wrong With My Baby" is a classic along the line of "When A Man Loves A Woman" for its ability to utilize all the conventions of the time without being conventional. The skilful production team takes full advantage of their amazing ability to interweave their vocals and sing beautiful harmonies to generate a song that succeeds in spite of its title.

But that's part of the fun of these songs, is their titles: "You Got Me Hummin'", "I Said I Wasn't Gonna Tell Nobody", and "You Don't Know Like I Know" aren't going to be intellectual show stoppers. But why should they; they're pop songs not philosophical discussions.

Comparing this music to some of the overblown, self-important twaddle that passes itself off as popular music today, and the jumped up rock and rollers referring to themselves as artists, the work of Sam and Dave is a breath of fresh air. There's nothing overly "significant" about their music, but it was joyous and infectious like the gospel music that gave it life.

Listening to Double Dynamite by Sam and Dave is to be reminded of how much fun music can be. It's music that’s a celebration of rhythm, melody, and great vocals. This is a disc that every aspiring pop musician should listen to so they can remember that they are supposed to be there to entertain their audiences, not inflict themselves upon them.

If you're not familiar with the work of Sam and Dave, than you really owe it to yourself to pick up a copy of Double Dynamite as soon as it becomes available and find out what you've been missing for all these years. It may not change your life, but it will put a bounce in your step and a grin on your face, which isn't such a bad thing, now is it?


Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:42 AM |

June 06, 2006

CD Review: Harlan County U.S.A.: Songs Of The Coal Miner's Struggle Various Artists

Who would be a coal miner? Your world consists of seeing daylight twice in the day; once before descending to the pit face in the morning, and once again when coming up for the return home at night. Aside from that you live your life underground in bad air, doing backbreaking work, and risking sudden death from trapped gases or a sudden cave in.

How much has really changed for the mining communities in the last seventy years is hard to quantify. The miners still go down into the pit everyday, to chip away at the pit face and load up the carts with coal. Maybe the mines are better ventilated now than before, and their safety is a little more assured, but disasters still happen.

Miners still get trapped below the surface and families still gather at the pit head waiting for news of their loved ones as teams of their fellows descend in sometimes fruitless attempts to dig them free before they suffocate, or simply starve to death. Of course, now instead of it being a private community affair it gets telecast across the world as camera crews enjoy the death watch for their viewers.

Black lung is still a cause of death among miners, as their lungs slowly fill up with coal dust and iron filaments form working in the pits. But the world still burns coal, and as long as we do we will keep sending people down into the depths of the earth to bring it back to the surface.

The history of the American trade unions is irrevocably linked to the coalmines. If there was ever an industry where the workers needed someone to stand up to their bosses it was the miners in the early part of the twentieth century. What some of us would consider horrendous working conditions today, are light years away from what the miner's life used to be.

Old folk songs like "Sixteen Tons" aren't just cute lyrics, they were an accurate description of the miner's life. They lived in houses owned by the company, they bought their food and goods from stores owned by the company, and they could very well at the end of their days die owing money to the company that they worked, and probably gave their life, for.

In the United States a small county in Kentucky, Harlan County, has come to symbolize the coal miner's fight for rights and safety in the eyes of many people. Not only is it smack dab in the middle of coal country but in 1976 Barbara Kopple released her documentary Harlan County U.S.A. which depicted a protracted and bitter coal miner's strike.

A miner's strike doesn’t' just affect the folk in the pit; it's the whole community. Sometimes it's the wives who are the strongest advocates because they're the ones who face the reality of having to live with the fear of losing their husbands to the earth and disease.

They're the ones who are left behind with nothing when the pit caves in because the company owns the house they live in and the company owns the store they buy food from. They can either leave town or sell their family into indentured servitude by mortgaging their children's future to the mines by living on credit, until their children can work it off.

First the movie and now the soundtrack CD Harlan County USA: Songs Of The Coal Miner's Struggle emphasise the role that women have played over the course of the years in the fight for miner's rights. The seminal union song "Which Side Are You On" was written by Florence Reece while she sat in her house with company thugs outside waiting for her husband to come home so they could kill him.

When you listen to this CD of music both from the movie and related to the topic of striking miners, you won't hear the organizing songs that you may be accustomed to. These haven't been smoothed out by urban folk groups like Peter, Paul, and Mary to sound nice and polished to the ear. These are songs sung by people from Kentucky and the Appalachians, singing about their husbands, brothers, sisters, wives, and neighbours.

People like Jim Garland who went to work in the mines although he was legally blind is recorded for the first time singing his song "The Death Of Harry Simms". Harry Simms was a young union organiser who stayed with Jim and his family until he was murdered. Shortly after that Jim was blacklisted by the mines and moved to New York City at the invitation of the miner's union to tell the story of Harry.

His sister Sarah Ogan Gunning and half-sister Molly (the folk singer Aunt Molly Jackson) worked as a duo singing at rallies and organizing meetings. She eventually had to leave the mining life when brown lung and tuberculosis forced her to move away from the pit life. This CD features her singing her sister's adaptation of the traditional "Hard Working Miner"

"Coal Black Mining Blues" is sung by Nimrod Workman who was born in Kentucky in 1895 and survived four decades of working in the mines in the days before health care, safety, and proper pay. His songs bore witness to the history of the miner's struggle from the days when the union was the miner's best friend and their subsequent corruption and betrayal of the people they were supposed to represent. In spite of black lung he lived until the age of 99, and passed in 1995.

Not all the of music on this disc is performed by former miners of course, but most all of them are native to this region. Merle Travis, who wrote the earlier mentioned "Sixteen Tons", the song that has become the most synonymous with the miner's live, was born in Kentucky. Doc Watson was born in North Carolina and even if you know nothing about blue grass music or the Appalachians his name will probably be familiar to most of you. His contribution is a haunting rendition of the traditional tune "And Am I Born To Die"

But it's the women whose voice rings loudest on this disc. The voice of Phyllis Boyens, daughter of Nimrod Workman, appears on a couple of songs, including the aptly named "Dream Of A Miner's Child", but the woman who sings the harmony vocal on that track, Hazel Dickens, sings the loudest and clearest of them all.

Hazel Dickens has been a force in traditional bluegrass and old-time music for the last forty years. As a native of West Virginia she was well acquainted with the lives led by the coal miners and their families, so it wasn't a great leap to include her music in the soundtrack of the original Harlan County U.S.A. movie.

To those of you used to the prettified music that passes for country and bluegrass these days her voice will sound unspeakably rural and unrefined. But it’s the voice of the people of that region, and speaks both for and to them. She is part of that unbroken line that leads back to Woody Guthrie's songs for the Appalachian farmers and workers during the dust bowl.

It's when you listen to people like Hazel, that you can hear who Bob Dylan was trying to sound like when he first started out. That burr in the throat and the high nasal twang, that is so distinctive among the singers from this area even today. It's different from the Nashville country twang like a dirt road is different from a paved highway. They both do the same thing, one's just a whole lot rougher and it takes a while to appreciate its particular beauty.

The songs Hazel sings, whether her own or another's, on this disc couldn't be sung by anyone who didn't have all the elements that go into being a mountain singer without them losing something of their power. These aren't just protest songs, they are the stories of real people who have lived and died under the ground, been killed for fighting to make life better for their fellows, or have chocked away their lives unable to breath because of black lung.

Coal miners have always been the dirty secret of industry that nobody wants to know about. They live and work in conditions that even today border on the insane. When that elevator drops, they still don't know whether or not it will come back up at the end of the day. How many coal mine disasters have there been this year? Every year we still get at least one that will leave a community devastated.

The songs on Harlan County U.S.A.: Songs Of The Coal Miner's Struggle maybe union songs and protest songs, but they are also a reminder of the cost that is paid on a daily basis by a segment of our society so that we can have electricity to read at by night, or watch our televisions, or write reviews like this. These songs are a history that most of us will never read or hear about in school or on the news. You may not agree with the politics espoused by the music, but you can't deny the strength of the people they portray.

One of the things I've always admired about Americans is their ability to stand up and fight for what they believe in. To me this CD epitomises that spirit through the words and music recorded that depict the struggles and the lives of these brave people called coal miners. If it serves no other purpose than to remind people of the fact that to stand up for yourself isn't a bad thing, and that the people who do are what make a country strong, than Harlan County U.S.A.: Songs Of The Coal Miner's Struggle will be a success

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:17 AM |

June 05, 2006

The Hippocratic Oath And Genital Mutilation

Hands up everyone who knows what the Hippocratic Oath is? My bet is that most of you have at least a vague idea that it has something to do with a code of conduct for doctors. That it implies they will put the good of the patient before all other considerations is probably the most widely understood meaning of the oath.

It was written down by Hippocrates, or maybe one of his students, in the 4th century B.C. and aside from the prayer to Apollo that opens the oath, and some modernizations to accommodate our changed world, its still a pretty darn good set of guidelines. I won't give my patients medicines that will harm them, I won't do any procedure that I'm not capable of, and I will never do harm to anyone are all things we'd like to think our own doctor would adhere to.

Of course you have to wonder these days the way some doctors run their practices if they ever heard of that Oath or any one of the modern variations that they now have doctors recite. Especially the part about medicines that will cause people harm; how many class action law suits are going on right now because of prescription drugs that caused sever contradictions among patients?

Sure some of them are the fault of the pharmaceutical companies and the regulating agencies rushing some wonder drug on to the market without giving it proper testing. But there are also the instances, far more common than you'd think, of Doctors not bothering to check a patients medical history to find out hey have high blood pressure and the medication they've just prescribed isn't supposed to be taken under those circumstances.

Then there are the doctors who look at their patients in terms of how much money are they worth and how much work do they involve. The ideal patient for this type of doctor is the one who won’t take up much of their time, but needs to see them on a regular basis so that billable hours can be increased.

There have been cases reported in Canada where doctors are refusing to take on clients who are elderly, or who will require extensive amounts of treatment, while not allowing the doctor to charge extra billable hours: so much for treating anyone in need.

But at least that's only a case of neglect and not a case of subjecting a patient to unnecessary and harmful treatments like what has been discovered happing in countries that still practice ritual female genital mutilation. The World Health Organization (W.H.O.) has released a report that reveals more and more doctors in developing countries are participating in these procedures.

While calling for the procedure to be stamped out as soon as possible, the W.H.O. reserved some of their harshest language for trained medical people participating in what they refer to as the torture of innocent victims. While conceding it may be helping to cut down on the risk of AIDS by the fact that clean instruments are being used, they liken it to using a clean knife to kill someone.

Three million girls under the age of ten are subjected to this procedure every year, which involves the cutting away of parts of the clitoris in an attempt to dampen their sexual appetites and increase their value as a wife. Lest we be in any rush to point the finger at any particular faith, it seems to be done equally amongst Muslims and Christians; yet another way in which the two faiths seem to agree on the place of women in society.

So what's the big deal about doctors taking part you may be asking? If it's going to happen shouldn't it at least be done safely? Putting aside the simple morality of condoning torture by being present, the long-term health issues of the procedure should be enough to prevent any doctor from participating in the operation.

Depending on the severity of the mutilation the risk of haemorrhaging during childbirth increases by 70%, the neo-natal death rate by as much as 55% over women who have not been tortured. In countries where the infant mortality rate is already high you would think doctors and other health care professionals would be mindful of such results wouldn't you?

If a doctor is making the spurious claim of participating because he has the patient's best interest at heart, then I would ask him wouldn't the patient's best interest be for the procedure not to take place at all? Wouldn't you as a respected medical professional better serve your patient by explaining to those, most likely the father of the child, that want the procedure performed they are actually decreasing the woman's chances of coming to term safely?

People who would do this procedure to their daughters, with the purpose of making them more attractive as wives, might think twice about it if they knew that daughters might not be able to fulfill their sacred duty of dropping babies that live after having their vagina mutilated. When dealing with stock, you always want to make sure it breads effectively, otherwise it might affect the sale price, or dowry as the case maybe.

Any doctor having anything else to do with these procedures aside from fighting against them as barbaric, and claiming to be doing it for the good of the patient, is in my mind akin to somebody saying they assisted at a death camp because they wanted to make sure that the Jews got the fairest treatment possible. There is no excuse that can validate the action.

I've not always agreed with W.H.O. and their classifications of disease and ideas on treatment. But on this issue they are right on the money. The practice of genital mutilation has no place in our world, and any doctor who takes part in that disgustingness deserves nothing but our condemnation.

By lending the authority of their profession to the practice they are giving an air of legitimacy to a barbarism that should have been outlawed years ago. Only by isolating and ostracizing this behaviour will it be ever stopped, seeking to make it more palatable only encourages its continuance.

Any doctor who willingly participates in one of these procedures needs to re read his Hippocrates: at least the bit about not doing harm.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:01 AM |

June 04, 2006

Putumayo And The World

I remember as a kid a big event was going downtown to the main flagship store of Toronto's landmark, San The Record Man. Three stories high, plus a basement, and who knows how many square feet, crammed full of more records than you could think possibly existed. They had everything, and the people who worked there knew everything there was to know about records.

You have to remember this was in the days before the chain store, or the franchise, diluted the purchase of a record into a mere financial transaction. It was also the days before the birth of the small independent record stores that started to spring up in the mid seventies to meet the demands of the burgeoning independent scene that was fuelled by the punks, and then kept alive by the incredibly conservative nature of the major labels

Record labels sprouted up in the backs of record stores around the world. On a trip to London in 1980, I carried demo tapes for a friend, which ended up in the hands of people running small record stores in Piccadilly with names like Rough Trade and Beggar's Banquet.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, rewind the tape back to Sam's four floors of music. The scrap heap of remaindered bargains in the basement, the maelstrom of madness that was the main floor's popular and classical music sections, the calmness of the second floor's, blues, jazz and folk sections and the mystery of what exactly it was they sold on the third floor. Record stores were still magical places in those days that fed the imagination and gave you an education in nomenclature.

While I could understand the rationale behind the rock and classical music sections; opera obviously went with orchestral works, and The Beatles belonged in the same section as the Beach Boys and the Rolling Stones, the folk music section was awfully confusing.

As everyone who was even remotely with it knew, folk music meant people playing guitars and singing songs about important stuff like the war or politics. You know Arlo Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs and Joan Baez. So what were all these groups with the funny names that didn't sing in English doing crammed in side by each with them? What did some half naked smiling woman from Brazil have to do with Simon and Garfunkle? (The folk section was a revelation for an 11 year old boy in more ways then one I'll tell you; my first indication that Europeans and South Americans were a little more liberal then North America in their display of the female form were the covers of record albums on the second floor of Sam's in the folk section)

This was my first glimmer of understanding that folk music was meant literally; it was the music of folk. Whether they are folk from Africa, Jamaica, Germany, The Ukraine, or India it didn't matter. Folk were folk and they all had different types of music that represented their different people.

The music was usually either uniformly poorly recorded, with surface noise creating a Phil Spector like wall of sound that made voices toneless and brass strident, or recorded for anthropological reasons by an earnest musicologist who took portable recording equipment with them into the jungles to record the strange music of these distant lands. In those pre World music days few and far between was the performer given anything more than short shrift by the forces in charge of music in the continental America's and other bastions of civilization.

For every Ravi Shankar who experienced some popular success there were hundreds who went unknown and unappreciated by people outside of their own countries. Even worse were the North Americans whose music was considered "ethnic" and didn't fit into any of the easy pigeon holes of pop music. How much zydeco music did you ever hear on the radio prior to the term "World" music being introduced into our lexicon?

It wasn't until 1982 that World even became a designation in music's vocabulary. It was with the formation of the World Of Music, Arts and Dance (W.O.M.A.D.) and their ensuing festivals and recordings that the term began to enter popular music as a means of describing non Western music.

According to the Wikipedia entry on World Music, it was at a 1987 meeting of distributors, producers and others associated with the genre of music that the term was decided upon. They were desperately looking for a means of distinguishing themselves from the field so that retailers would be more encouraged to both stock and promote their materials, and not just dump it into the folk music section as had been the case up until now.

All it took was a simple show of hands by those attending and the idea was approved. It was supposed to be only a temporary thing, a way to publicize an initial compilation release that the labels were issuing as a joint venture, but it ending up sticking, binging us to the current status of things.

There have been many players in the world music scene, ranging from individual pop musicians who have had a genuine interest in expanding their repertoire (Harry Manx, Ry Cooder and Bob Brozman) and broadening their horizons, to whole labels dedicated to the compilation, distribution, and selling of this new brand. Some of them were more genuine in their interest; seeking out, recording and promoting individual artists and investing in the local music industry, while others simply swept down upon the back catalogues of older companies and repackaged royalty free music.

But amongst all of them a few have achieved more success than others due to their persistence and ability to find a unique niche in the market place. One of the most successful to date has been the American based company Putumayo. Named for a river in the Colombian interior Putumayo began life as a gift boutique and clothing store in New York City in 1975. It was chancing upon a performance of the African band Kotoja in 1991 that started founder Dan Stroper on the road to becoming a record producer.

What started out as a desire to have more appropriate music for his clothing store and assembling his own compilation tapes for that purpose, resulted in the formation of Putumayo World Music. Stroper approached Richard Foos who was then president of Rhino Records and worked out an agreement where they would begin collaborating on creating and marketing world music collections. As a result Putumayo's first two CDs were released in April of 1993.

From such humble beginnings was an empire formed. 15 years from the earliest idea and thirteen since the first two releases, Putumayo is probably the most easily recognised World Music label in North America, and has now spread its wings to include Europe, and even more impressively South America, Africa, and Asia where the majority of their music still originates.

Part of Putumayo's success can be laid at the feet of their realization that in order to compete in the music industry you have to be visible and recognizable. In most cases they are marketing a style of music and not an individual artist, which makes label identity even more important. Then there is the fact that except for the occasional specialty radio show, they will not receive any significant airtime with which to promote their product.

The first thing you need to do in this sort of situation is pick a target audience that will be appropriate to what you're selling. No matter how you slice it Putumayo needed their audience to have money, be educated, and leisure time to be interested in travel so that they might have had exposure to other cultures in the past.

Dan Stroper was in the unique position of already knowing that market, having been catering to them with his clothing and gift stores. Who else is going to be buying stuff in shops that specialize in items other's would consider exotica, than the exact people he's looking to sell music to. It couldn’t have taken much of a leap for him to realize that he needed to sell his brand to the "boutique market".

Since the mid 1970's, when head shops decided they needed to become a little more respectable and broaden their client base by selling more than just rock t-shirts and drug paraphernalia, stores selling handicrafts from different areas of the world have started popping up all over the place. From little hole in the wall joints that were indeed no more than expanded head shops, to higher end establishments that had buyers in countries like Indonesia shipping back goods by the bale.

In the early days of this type of store there existed a type of economic and cultural exploitation, as individual artists were not being properly compensated for their work. But times changed, and artists began forming collectives and storeowners became more socially responsible and policies of "Fair Trade" were implemented in more and more instances.

As artisans began being paid true value for their work, prices in the stores gradually increased to reflect the dollar amount being paid out for product. Instead of selling to hippies the market place shifted and the purchasing power switched over to those who wanted go buy third world art guilt free.

Having entered this market in its infancy, Stroper was intimately familiar with both the clientele and how to best appeal to them. They would want authenticity, but they would also want accessibility. The easiest way to accommodate both those demands was to create compilations that were indicative of either a country or a genre of music.

Putumayo has achieved remarkable success in their fifteen years, and has expanded their line up every time they've offered a new release. They sponsored tours of the United States for some of the acts who's music graces their discs as a means of increasing both the label's and the artist's expsure..

Whether its music from one their "Groove" series; contemporary dance music form the country of origin, "Lounge" or "Dance Party" mixes, they have sought out the best available music for their audience. They have developed a children's line that introduces a young audience to something other then what they hear on the radio on a daily basis.

Of course you can't be successful without people being critical. But if one looks closely it's hard to find Putumayo guilty of anything other than doing a really good job of disseminating the music they produce. Sure most of the music produce is plucked from previously released sources, but tell me another World label that doesn't do the same thing. Rare indeed is the label that will specifically produce an album for an individual group or performer, and even rarer to have them receive the exposure they get from inclusion on a Putumayo collection.

In fact there is less to criticize about this label then others. While most distributors will only focus on developing countries, and call that World music, Putumayo is one of the few that actively search out music from European and North American sources.

They are one of the few who recognize the fact that countries produce music beyond the traditional, and have created their different series to capture that diversity. It is not unusual for Putumayo to have three or four separate discs from a region, ranging from the contemporary to the traditional sounds of the area.

Each disc also represents an investment back into the country that is represented musically. Either in the shape of a percentage of the proceeds being designated to a specific charitable organization, or in building a new perception of the people living there. Most of North America can't hear the name Columbia without thinking cocaine. These musical discs and the information in their booklets may not change people's attitudes completely, but they at least present a different perspective of the country in question.

Of all the arts that represent a culture, music seems to be the one able to communicate to the broadest audience. Perhaps, no matter the language, music has the capacity to communicate emotions that is easier to understand than other means of expression. A dance rhythm is a dance rhythm in every culture, and if you can move your feet and butt to it, communication has been successful.

The music Putumayo produces may not always be to everyone's taste, but it would be a poor world if we all only liked the same things. Besides which, they produce enough music that you're bound to find something pleasing to your pallet.

Putumayo has to be the most instantly recognizable world music label on the market right now, and their attempts to bring the music of the world to the world seems to be succeeding. With everyone from Wal-Mart to fair trade boutiques selling their CDs the chances are that they will continue to do so for years to come.

This is the first of two a part feature on World Music and specifically the Putumayo label. In the second part I will be asking Putumayo's founder Dan Stroper some questions about specifics of how the label operates and to respond to some of the criticisms that have been made against the world music genre in general. Look for it in the near future

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:26 AM |

June 03, 2006

Condoms, Needles, And AIDS

Question: How is the HIV virus that causes AIDS transmitted? It has to travel from an infected blood stream into another blood stream. What are the two most common ways that this occurs? Unprotected sexual intercourse and the sharing of needles between intravenous drug users are still the most common means of the disease being transmitted.

What, than, is the answer to the spread of HIV and AIDS? Well there are two, either abstinence, which given this world is an unrealistic expectation, or educating people on the use of condoms and not re-using or sharing needles when injecting drugs. Obviously in the case of the intravenous drug user you'd wish for abstinence, as there are so many other health risks involved with shooting up. But if we can't get them to stop, we can at least prevent them spreading disease and putting a strain on health care systems.

To some people what I've just said in the above paragraph is the proverbial red flag in front of a bull. Some people, from the depths of their Christian or Islamic compassionate hearts, will say things like their sinners and criminals so whatever happens to them is just a case of reaping what you sow. Well unfortunately the more people who have the disease the more likely the chances of it continuing to spread to the so-called innocent victims.

It just takes one pint of blood getting past a screening process and making it out into circulation for a person receiving a blood transfusion to contract the virus. It only takes one police officer or paramedic getting blood in an open cut accidentally for there to be a chance of the virus being spread. Then there are the babies of the infected mothers being born with the virus because their mother's hadn't know to use a condom or not to use the needle that six other people had already used.

By the way, there is no such thing as an innocent or guilty victim of a disease. A virus doesn't sit in judgement upon the people it infects, its just looking for a new place to live and grow like the rest of us. The only things that judge people are people. If anybody is guilty in this mess it's those who, for whatever reasons, would rather see people die then, heaven forbid, teach them how to use a condom or give them clean needles.

Aside from those folks who knowingly infect others, (including the ones who continued to sell blood products which they knew could be tainted), the only guilty parties involved in the spread of the HIV virus are those refusing to allow anything but abstinence be described as a preventative. Anyone who seriously believes that is an effective policy for the population at large is either woefully naïve or dangerously narrow minded.

I have nothing against abstinence, but that's a personal choice made by individuals. I'm probably more abstinent than most of you out there advocating it, as I haven't had a drink in twelve years, or anything else for that matter. But that was my decision, not something somebody forced on me, nor one where there was another alternative. If non-alcoholic beer really were alcohol free (its not) I would drink it because that would be a safe alternative to abstinence.

It's one thing to make a personal choice on how you want to live your life, and another thing altogether to try and impose that on other people. It's ironic that so many of the people who advocate imposing their point of view on others, are the same ones who scream bloody murder about governments interfering with their rights as individuals. They won't accept a government's legal authority to enforce laws, but have no problem interfering in the way others lead their lives by claiming moral authority.

The issue of what can or cannot be taught or offered as means of preventing the spread of HIV and the AIDS virus has been a thorn in the side of the international aid community for years now. On one hand there are the Muslim countries unwilling to cede rights to women to allow them access to information on prevention. On the other there is the current U.S. administration's policy of linking funding with stipulations against the advocacy of condom use.

While some European nations recognize the necessity of needle exchanges as a means of controlling the spread of disease among intravenous drug users, other countries are reluctant to endorse any plans that suggest those programmes. That these and other issues are still prevalent today is being made clear at the United Nations' High-Level Meeting on AIDS. The purpose of the meeting is to try and reach an agreement on a global strategy for fighting the spread of HIV/AIDS from now until 2010.

In light of the reports recently released by the United Nations (U.N.) AIDS office that 40 million people are living with the disease and 25 million have died from it; that only 9% of pregnant woman in poor countries are receiving care to help prevent mother to child transmission when the goal had been 80% by now you'd think there would be a more concentrated effort to find a solution.

The one simple goal of this meeting was to try and set 2010 as a deadline for ensuring that anybody anywhere who wanted treatment for AIDS would be able to obtain it. But civil groups fear that they'll be lucky to escape these meetings without losing any of the gains that were made in 2001 on prevention, let along treatment. All the old stumbling blocks have surfaced again; countries refusing to sign off on anything mentioning gays, prostitutes, intravenous drug use, and condoms.

In an effort to guide people away from old arguments UN General Assembly President Jan Eliasson put forward a proposal mentioning everything by specific name and also calls for money to ensure the availability of the treatment. It is estimated that nearly $25 billion will be needed in 2010 to fight the disease.

While there is of course a great hue and cry over amounts of money involved, it must be realized it's been the continual inaction on the part of too many countries that has ensured the crisis level we are now at. There has been far too much self-righteous condemnation and far too little compassion from far too many people. Every year that heads remain buried in the sand is another year the numbers increase among the dead and infected.

There may come a time when it's all a matter of too little too late, hopefully we haven't reached that stage yet. If the countries involved with this meeting can at least agree that any and all methods are important, and not to hinder ones they may not personally agree with, it will be a good start. Until that sort of agreement happens hope for a resolution to the disaster in Africa gets fainter and fainter.

The longer we wait the higher the costs rise, both in lives and money. Isn't it about time that we grew up enough to be able to realize that our way is not the only way? It's a matter of life and death.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:07 AM |

June 02, 2006

Canadian Politics: Inaction On Native Issues Could Haunt Conservatives

Back in the early 1990's Canada's First Nations patience finally ran out with government lies, broken promises, and treaty reneging. From the Miqmac of New Brunswick's fish ins to the occupation of traditional sacred site in the British Columbian interior; confrontations were the rule not the exception in negotiations.

From city councils deciding to build golf courses on Mohawk treaty lands (Oka Quebec), diverting water ways from reserve land (Alberta), the threatened flooding of traditional hunting grounds by hydro electric projects (Northern Quebec), the occupation of Parliament Hill in Ottawa by Mohawks, the failure to finalise land claims (everywhere-but especially the Lubicon Cree of Northern Alberta, and nations in British Columbia's interior), to the killing of Dudley George during the Chippewa occupation of Iperwash provincial park in Ontario. There wasn't a flashpoint threatening to explode into violence at some point somewhere in Canada during those years.

The most famous of those incidents, the one that still resonates most with people on both sides of the issue, was the standoff in Oka, Quebec. The Kanesatake (Pronounced Ga-nes-a-ta-ge: hard g sound) Mohawks had been ceded rights to a stand of pine trees and burial lands by the government of New France in 1717, and were to be held in trust for them by a Catholic Seminary. The church took it upon themselves to cede ownership over to themselves.

Since 1868 the Mohawks have been trying to reclaim the land in order to prevent it from being sold off. All levels of government had stymied them at every turn. In 1990 when the city council of Oka decided to clear the remaining stand of pine trees in order to expand a private members golf course (of which the mayor was a member) and build luxury condominiums, it was the final insult.

Members of the band blockaded the road leading to the pines preventing access, and on July 11th the mayor of Oka requested the Sûreté de Quebec (provincial police) to clear the barricade and open the road. In the ensuing confrontation, where the police fired smoke bombs and tear gas to create confusion, a constable was shot in the face and later died.
Oka_lasagna_stare_down
The crisis wasn't resolved until the federal government agreed to buy the land under dispute in order to prevent the development of the golf course. This only came about after the army had been deployed and two more deaths had followed. If the government of Canada had respected the treaty rights of the band in the first place these events would have never happened, but they had let a situation fester until it reached boiling point.

The Oka blockade ran from March until August of 1990, and it was important because it set the tone for the rest of the early 1990s. By 1995 frustrations had reached such a pitch that a group of Mohawks from the Tyendanega reserve in eastern Ontario, raided the office of the Assembly of First Nations in Ottawa to protest against their lack of action on behalf of native people.

But things began to shift again, and it appeared that talks on land claims and treaties were back on track. The issue of self-government was dusted off, and the vague idea of reserves having powers similar to municipalities was discussed. After who knows how many years of struggle the Nisga's claim to a huge swath of land in the interior of British Columbia was finally recognized as legitimate and ceded back to them.

There seemed to be progress being made on all fronts. The courts were finding in favour of former inmates in the Residential School system and forcing the government and the churches who ran them to offer compensation packages, the Cree of Northern Quebec successfully prevented the construction of a hydro electric project that would have destroyed their hunting territory, and Metis (mixed blood) and off-reserve natives were finally granted full status rights and recognised as first nations people by the Supreme Court of Canada.

Then in November of 2005, after years of negotiations at all levels of government, the provincial leaders, the Prime Minister, and the Assembly of First Nations agreed to two new treaties. The first, modeled after a highly successful Australian program, called for the establishment of a Reconciliation and Reparation committee that would develop programming to foster better understanding between First Nations communities and the rest of Canada and finalize agreements for all those survivors of Residential Schools not yet compensated.

More important was the agreement signed that saw the commitment of 5 billion dollars over ten years to bringing life on reserves in line with the standard expected by all Canadians. These monies would be used for basic infrastructure like sewage and water treatment; ensuring proper health care facilities exist; establishing education systems on par with the rest of Canada, and generally giving reserve residents a chance to break the cycle of poverty they have been stuck in for too many years.

All in all it looked like things had never been so good for Canada's Native population. But even as the final negotiations were underway for the Kelowna agreement, events in Northern Ontario were undermining the sincerity of the government's intentions. Last September the Kashechewan First Nation reserve's water supply was infected with dangerous levels of bacteria making it unfit to drink.

After weeks of federal government inactivity, the premier of Ontario had the people of the reserve evacuated until the problem could be dealt with. It wasn't his responsibility, but he did something about it anyway; an unexpected but gratifying move by a politician willing not to pass the buck. Finally in October the Liberal government announced a plan to relocate the reserve to higher ground, fix the water supply, build 50 new houses, and increase the number of nurses in residence.

Nothing could be done at the time; winter was staring to set in already, so the relocation would have to wait for the spring. Well, spring is here and there's a new government and they are doing their best not to fulfill any of the promises made by the previous government.

After already making it clear that they aren't willing to go through with the Kelowna accord as it was negotiated last fall by omitting its funding from their budget in April, yesterday they announced they wouldn't be able to move the reserve because there wasn't any money budgeted for it.

The current Minister of Indian Affairs, Jim Prentice said that the Liberals had never put money aside for moving the reserve so they the Conservatives couldn't do it. Interestingly enough Mr. Prentice was one of the harshest critics of Liberal inaction in the fall when the crisis was first revealed. When asked why his government hadn't included the money in their most recent budget if they knew it wasn't there, he changed the subject.

Former Prime Minister Paul Martin took issue with the statement that funds weren’t available for either moving the people of Kashechewan or the Kelowna accord saying funds were accounted for and available. He referred to a November 24th Finance department document that showed how the money could be found. He also added that since according to the new government they had just found an extra few billion dollars in surplus, saying they are lacking money to do anything is a bit curious.

Already this spring we have seen an occupation of territory in Caledonia Ontario by members of the Six Nations Mohawk reserve protesting the building of a housing development on treaty land they claim was stolen from them by the federal government.

The land had been part of a parcel that had been awarded to Mohawks who had been loyal to the British during the revolutionary war in the United States. In the 1880s the Mohawks leased the land to the federal government in order to allow the construction of a highway. Instead of returning the unused land the government began selling it off to people such as the developers who are building the subdivision on the disputed territory.

Although it appears that the dispute is being resolved, the Mohawks are at least removing the barricades blocking the highway allowing local traffic to proceed again, this situation is eerily similar to ones that sprang up in the early 1990's. There are still far too many unresolved treaty lands in Canada for this situation not to be repeated.

In the early 1990's Brian Mulroney's Conservative government proved itself insensitive to the needs of First Nations people, and only a few months into their mandate, it looks like Stephen Harper's version of the Conservative Party is no different. Assembly of First Nations' Chief Phil Fontaine has been able to keep people's impatience in check with the promise of finally getting a real deal signed with the government. Back in November it looked like his gamble had paid off and his people were going to be rewarded for playing the game by the government's rules.

But if the Conservative government continues to make lame excuses instead of acting upon agreements, or backtracks away from committing the necessary resources that will allow real change to happen, that patience could snap. There are only so many hundreds of years you can expect a people to put up with being treated as second-class citizens before they snap.

Sixteen years ago we had was now referred to as the long hot summer at Oka. It may not be this year, or even the one following, but if things don't change for the better soon those days might look like a mild day in spring compared to what could be coming. The issues facing First Nations people aren't just going to go away, and neither are they. The sooner the Conservative government figures that out the better for all of us.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:15 AM |

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June 01, 2006

Canadian Politics: Diversionary Tactics

Canadian politics is a lot like soccer; you can go huge amounts of time where it looks like apparently nothing is happening, when in reality it's been a build up to a flurry of activity. Well, lets be fair here, that's probably not an accurate reflection of soccer players; there's more chance that they've planned what's going to happen in advance.

Around here everything just sort of runs by the seat of the pants with the situation, as the Generals like to say during wartime, fluid. In other words things are happening but we're not quite sure what, why or how. Although when politicians use the word fluid in relation to an issue it usually means that they are waiting to see what public reaction will be before they have an opinion. Heaven forbid they commit to anything and take a leadership role.

Maybe this will help any American football fan understand the Canadian version of the game a little better. It's just like our politics, we are allowed to have far more players in motion than you do on any given down. It may not explain the whole single point for missing a field goal bit, or why our field is damn long and wide, but scrambling seems to be ingrained into our social character.

There's two ways that this tactic can be applied in Canadian politics: there's the endlessly clarify the position ploy, and the avoid it and hope it goes away ploy. Both require that politicians be extremely agile and quick on their feet and are used in controversial and delicate situations.

Most commonly both rules will be applied under similar circumstances; completely misunderstanding the mood of the public or not wanting to deal with anything controversial. Not surprisingly endless clarification usually applies in the former while avoiding it and hoping it goes away applies in the latter condition.

Sometimes there are subtle nuances that are applied to these strategies, especially in the case of endless explaining. If it's an issue that threatens to be controversial, but not one they can see anyway of avoiding, what politicians might do is float their proposals in advance to gauge the reaction, then start the modifications and the explanations until they have something that is either acceptable to the public, or everybody is so confused about where they stand it no longer matters what their opinion is.

This of course is where unnamed sources and tame reporters come in handy. If you're a smart politician you always have a couple of reporters you have let cultivate you, so that they think they have a source inside the government. You can use them to plant anything you want in the newspapers through the simple expedient of leaking them the information.

The other potential means at a politician's disposal is to pass the buck and have a non-elected official do the revealing. This way when you step forward to "clarify" the position it give the appearance of some civil servant getting it wrong, and that wasn't the governments plan at all.

That was the circumstances in regards to the conduct of Canadian troops in Afghanistan. In a story in yesterday's Globe and Mail it was reported the Canadian high command had told its soldiers that the rules of the Geneva convention concerning Prisoners of War (P.O.W.) did not apply to the Taliban. Because of their command structure and lack of uniforms they did not fit the definition of enemy combatants and were therefore not entitled to that consideration.

Today's paper featured a clarification under the headline of: Geneva Convention Applies In Afghanistan: Defence Minister. What makes this such a good example of the clarification model was the fact that the Minister simply repeated what his generals had already said.

The generals had said Taliban members would not be accorded status of P.O.W. but would be treated according to the Geneva Convention standards of humane treatment. In the House of Commons Defence Minister Dennis O'Connor said: "When they take prisoners, they will always follow the rules of the Geneva Convention, no lower standard than that.” Noticeably absent from his speech was any reference to whether that meant as P.O.W. s or just the humane treatment his generals had been quoted as talking about.

It was a masterful bit of not presenting a sitting target for the opposition members to take a run at. He's said very clearly what the public wants to hear, our troops are following the rules of The Geneva Convention, thus setting their minds at rest about any possible dishonourable conduct on their part.

Obviously he's counting on people not reading any further than the sound-bite headline; in most people's minds Geneva Convention means treating P.O.W.s fairly and once those two magic words are said everything is hunky-dory. All in all though, it was a very impressive bit of political fancy footwork in the backfield.

When Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada were in opposition they were predicting everything from biblical plagues to the destruction of sacred family values if a bill legalizing same sex marriage was passed in the House of Commons. One of his promises during the last election was he would call a new vote on the issue.

This was largely seen as political grandstanding on his part by analysts because the Supreme Court of Canada had already ruled it unconstitutional to prevent same sex couples from legally getting married. The only way Mr. Harper would have been able to overrule the courts was by invoking the portion of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms called the Not Withstanding Clause, which allows a government to overrule a particular right as awarded by the courts.

It was mainly included in the constitution as a sop to Quebec so they could have their French only language laws for business signs. This way if anybody challenged the infamous bill 101 that had implemented the French only laws and created the language police in the courts, the government could overturn the ruling by invoking the Notwithstanding Clause.

Since Mr. Harper had already promised he wouldn't do that, the rationale behind the vote was non-existent except to appeal to the social conservative elements in his party. The problem is, that it's promises like that prevent him from winning seats in any of the major urban centres to the extent needed to form a majority government.

Since seats in our House of Commons are assigned based on representation by population, a huge chunk are confined to the Ontario/Quebec region where the majority of our population is concentrated in the urban centres of Toronto and Montreal and their surrounding suburbs. Those areas, and the other major population centre, Vancouver on the West Coast, went primarily to opposition parties in the last election because of fears of the social conservative views of Mr. Harper's party.

So it doesn't come as much surprise to read that the Conservative Party is starting to wish the issue would just go away. First of all the motion they are considering introducing in the fall wouldn't even be a vote on same sex marriage, it would be a vote on whether or not there should be a vote on same sex marriage.

Talk about inspired. Rather than risk defeat on a controversial topic, first find out if people want to even have a vote. Notice it doesn't ask them whether or not they support same sex marriage, it's asking them if they see any point in debating the issue anymore.

Not only doesn't Mr. Harper risk re-opening the whole can of worms again, and belay the image of the reasonable party that he's trying to convey in Ontario and Quebec, but he throws a bone to the social conservatives by giving them their opportunity to vote against same sex marriage, without actually voting against it.

He's doing nothing about the issue while looking like he's doing something. What a perfect example of great political movement. All the activity and motion is just a diversionary tactic to hide the fact that nothing what so ever is going to change about the bill. Stephen Harper is not only wishing the issue would go away; he's performing the vanishing act that's making it disappear right in front of our eyes.

Perhaps it's because our House of Parliament only seems to be open for business about six months of the year, while the rest of the time Members of Parliament spend their time…well on other things, that everything seems to happen at once in spurts of intense energy. For three two-thee month stretches during the year all the political parties gather in the Nations Capital, Ottawa, to enact legislation, argue over issues, and generally try to govern this country.

Perhaps soccer really wasn't the best of analogies, it's a lot more like a feeding frenzy at the shark tank. Instead of it being blood that is spilt, it's words; and instead tearing a victim apart with their teeth, the pack dismembers ideas with words. The experienced politician has long ago learned tricks to prolong both the life of their ideas, and their careers.

Talking until you finally hit on the right solution or simply long enough to outlast the opposition's stamina and making issues vanish are only two means of survival at the disposal of today's Canadian politician. This week we have seen Conservative party members give examples of how to work those two popular diversionary tactics extremely well.

I wonder what would happen if politicians ever put the amount of energy into governing as they do into covering their own asses? It's a pity will probably never find out.


Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:10 AM |

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